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I want to set up an RDP host (Win Server 2012) for a maximum simultaneous use by 8 clients. Only "normal" applications will be run (no CAD or games). Do I need a dedicated graphics card or will an integrated chip (AMD A-Series or Intel HD) do?

Martin Müller
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  • I don't know if this makes any difference but I should add that the clients are Sun Thin Clients (fed by an intermediary oracle linux server). – Martin Müller Feb 12 '16 at 10:17

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Brief answer, no you don't need a graphics card.

By default the RDP sessions will never benefit from the graphics card because the RDP protocol driver acts as the graphics device.

RDP plugs into the Windows graphics system the same way a real display driver does, except that, instead of being a driver for a physical video card, RDP is a virtual display driver. Instead of sending drawing operations to a physical hardware GPU, RDP makes intelligent decisions about how to encode those commands into the RDP wire format. This can range from encoding bitmaps to, in many cases, encoding much smaller display commands such as “Draw line from point 1 to point 2” or “Render this text at this location.”

From https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rds/2009/03/03/top-10-rdp-protocol-misconceptions-part-1/

So the bit about the AMD or Intel on-chip graphics is kind of irrelevant.

Microsoft do have a RDP technology called RemoteFX, which (amongst other things) allows you to leverage a physical GPU on the RDSH to accelerate graphics in RDP sessions. It's pretty much unnecessary for standard office applications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteFX

Apologies for the prior incorrect, the RemoteFX GPU features only apply to virtual desktops, not normal RDP sessions.

BlueCompute
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  • IIRC RemoteFx also requires a special VM in which the remote desktop works - i.e. it is not "an RDP setup" (which implies terminal services) but a "you have your own VM, dear user, and we use the graphics card" setup. Much more hardware intensive. – TomTom Feb 12 '16 at 14:15
  • OH yes TomTom, you;re quite correct. I'm sure there is some way of doing RDP with hardware GFX acceleration though, just can't remember how it works? Any ideas? – BlueCompute Feb 12 '16 at 14:34
  • Thanks for the answers! I was looking into the issue more during the day and your answer now reassured me. – Martin Müller Feb 12 '16 at 14:52