Windows Virtual Desktop with GPU accelerated compute
Some times you need some extra graphics power in your WVD. I noticed that I now can select the NVv4 series machines in North Europe.
The NVv4-series virtual machines are powered by AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 GPUs and AMD EPYC 7V12(Rome) CPUs. With NVv4-series Azure is introducing virtual machines with partial GPUs. Pick the right sized virtual machine for GPU accelerated graphics applications and virtual desktops starting at 1/8th of a GPU with 2 GiB frame buffer to a full GPU with 16 GiB frame buffer.
Read more about NVv4
So I used the new simple ARM setup to deploy the new NVv4 to a new host pool and selected the smallest Standard NV4as_v4. Look at my post Windows Virtual Desktop waltzing in to Azure. To get the GPU features you then need to add some additional drivers and settings.
- Download and install the AMD driver for the GPU from here
Device manager will still show old drivers for GPU in the device manager:
- Reboot the VM
Now the VM will show the correct new driver installed:
3. Change the local GPO or assign a domain GPO with the following setting to enable GPU in RDP:
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Remote Session Environment.
- Use hardware graphics adapters for all Remote Desktop Services session
- Configure H.264/AVC hardware encoding for Remote Desktop connections
- Prioritize H.264/AVC 444 Graphics mode for Remote Desktop connections
4. Reboot again just to make all settings enabled and activated.
Now the WVD is powered by a GPU and the graphics is working pretty good. I will now do some testing and try to compare performance. Might come up in my next blog. stay tuned!
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