Windows Server 2012 with NVIDIA GRID GPU Driver
NVIDIA | 1.3Windows, Windows Server 2012 6.2 - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Excellent AMI
Pros: It does exactly as advertised. A strong Windows Server 2012, desktop included, which uses the NVidia GRID. Extremely fast and can run or render anything you throw at it. All for the price of 70 cents an hour.
Cons:
-Requires some setup, as other reviews have stated, you must install the Grid K520 drivers from their site and then DISABLE the default display adaptor in Device Manager. Otherwise your card won't be detected.
-Even though m3.medium instance is advertised as an option for this AMI, m3.medium does NOT offer NVidia GRID capabilities! To use this AMI's GPU resources, you MUST launch this with at least a G2 instance to have an Nvidia Grid! This confused me at first, but is likely mis-labeling or people wanting to use this AMI for a normal non-accelerated desktop.
-Teamviewer is NOT an acceptable solution to streaming 3D graphics or HD Video! Even though the lag is almost nonexistent, it's still obvious.
This does not subtract from the score because I got this AMI as an experiment to see if lag would be unnoticable when watching HD Video or streaming a game from Steam. Maybe on some connections, it would be, but I'm on a fairly fast connection and anything action-oriented is unplayable. This might change if proper desktop streaming software is installed as opposed to Teamviewer.
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RDP + GPU work perfectly
I've been using this AMI for a year over RDP in multi-monitor with full GPU acceleration without any issue. I also have sound out.
The trick is to make sure you install the GRID K520 driver, then Disable the "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" in Device Manager. Do not uninstall it or it will re-install and take over again.
Reboot and you're good to go.
RDP lag is unnoticeable for me. Even HD YouTube videos play almost like on my host machine.
Sound in doesn't work, but I can do GoToMeetings from the host while showing the VM.
If you benefit from this information, please return the favor by asking Amazon to add more RAM to the AMI! 15GB doesn't cut it for large projects. Good luck.
Nice
The driver is not installed automatically, a bit less convenient.
The driver is not installed automatically, a bit less convenient.
perfect when used with TeamViewer
Remoting GPU accelerated desktop from AWS instance:
using RDP at first to install TeamViewer inside the instance, and set it to start automatically ("Add this computer"). If you add the instance to your list of "Computers" in Teamviewer keychain, then you get notified when your VM desktop is up. A simple double click and you land directly on your AWS GPU accelerated desktop. You then have no worries with any of the RDP and VNC apps anymore, since they will be never used again. The nice thing is that the MAC address of the AWS instance does not change. So TeamViewer will always be available and working each time the instance starts up.
The whole experience then becomes really simple and seamless, and performs really well.