0

We have some headless Windows 7 machines in a datacenter. We use them to run unattended tests of a 3d graphics application (similar to a game).

We have trouble running the machines at 4k resolution at 60Hz. That is 3840x2160 at 60Hz. We have tried a few hardware solutions such as fit-headless but they will not always be at 60Hz. For example it will run at 30Hz.

Does anyone know how one can have headless machine which runs 4k @ 60Hz? Whether a hardware or software solution? I'm thinking there must be folks doing this, running graphics machines "in the cloud" but I cannot figure out how to do it reliably.

Philip
  • 109
  • 2
  • 1
    can you put this into a bit more context, why are Windows 7 machines in a datacenter? – Sum1sAdmin Apr 15 '16 at 20:53
  • One major difference between the "thousands of cloud machines" and your setup? Windows 7 is not a server operating system. It's built to have an attached monitor. Nearly all of the GPU instance that AWS et. al. provision are linux, with a precious few being Windows Server. – EEAA Apr 15 '16 at 21:39
  • 1
    @Rob-d we are a 100% remote company, so the only logical place for test machines is in the datacenter. By which I mean co-location racks. Otherwise it would be in someone's house taking up space. – Philip Apr 16 '16 at 00:46
  • @EEAA the software we are testing only runs on Windows. Using a server OS would not be crazy if we knew for sure that would fix the problem. Know any links about this? I feel like there must be some people doing Windows rendering in clouds for cloud-gaming or whatnot, I wish I knew how they address this. – Philip Apr 16 '16 at 00:47
  • Is there a better stack exchange site for this type of question? – Philip Apr 16 '16 at 01:57
  • If the question is what dongle to use, then [hardwarerecs.SE] would be appropriate. If the question is about configuration of Windows, then [SU] might be the most appropriate. Either way you need a bit less rant and a more clear question. – kasperd Apr 17 '16 at 21:25
  • Thanks @kasperd I rewrote the question and will try some other places if nothing turns up here. – Philip Apr 18 '16 at 14:25
  • Do they run with lower resolutions? Or a different refresh rate? I'm having a hard time decrypting your question as you don't actually explain what goes wrong, other than "it does not work". – pauska Apr 18 '16 at 16:02
  • @pauska I was hoping someone had solved this same problem, and could point us to a solution, rather than hoping someone would help me debug our current setup. I'm quite willing to throw out our current setup and adopt something, anything, that has been proven to work. But yes by "will not run reliably at 60Hz" I mean it will run at some lower refresh rate, like 30Hz, where we need 60Hz. – Philip Apr 18 '16 at 20:24
  • @pauska I updated question to explain running slower than 60Hz is the failure mode, not running at a lower resolution. – Philip Apr 18 '16 at 20:53
  • I think the biggest question here is what `not run reliably` really means. You never define what is going wrong at 60Hz. Is it slow, jittery, crashing the machine? You also never define what the actual desirable output is. Does it have to run the application smoothly? Are you remoting into the machine during these tests? Honestly, without proper knowledge of what the machine is doing vs. what you want it to do, the question reads more like your machines just don't have the GPU to force 4k @ 60Hz. – Naryna Apr 28 '16 at 16:44
  • @BrandynBaryski What "not run reliably" means in our case is we cannot count on the headless machine to run at 60Hz. A local machine with a monitor will run our software at 60Hz, meaning every frame takes less than 16.7ms. But the headline machine will sometimes run at 30Hz and sometimes run at other rates. A local monitor will run at 60Hz every time you boot it up for months at a time, it's always 60Hz. The hardware solutions we've tried will not hold 60Hz at 4k. – Philip May 01 '16 at 15:13

0 Answers0