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Remote FX rig

AMD_Gamer

Fully [H]
Joined
Jan 20, 2002
Messages
18,287
I could not pass up this $45 AR deal on Newegg so i will be building a Remote FX rig!

EurrR.jpg
 
Have you used RemoteFX yet? I've been thinking about toying around with it but didn't seem very useful / functional yet. I'd love some insight.
 
I'm following this, to see what it does and how this project works out :rolleyes:

What will you use for a client tho ?
 
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Me personally I plan to use an ARM based client..cause they are darn cheap and with RemoteFX all the processing is done on server end so really no reason to go above whats necessary :/
 
Me personally I plan to use an ARM based client..cause they are darn cheap and with RemoteFX all the processing is done on server end so really no reason to go above whats necessary :/

Want to share a link ? I'm also really interested in this, something to tinker with over winter!
 
Want to share a link ? I'm also really interested in this, something to tinker with over winter!

What kind of information do you want me to link?

Effectively RemoteFX is RDP 7.1, with it comes the ability to hardware accelerate RDP sessions. This way things like Direct X and games can be played over RDP.(from what I read opengl is weak as expected)

The trickiest part about RemoteFX though is licensing, I think Windows 7 allows for 1 Remote FX session (don't quote me on that). Other servers like Windows 2008 R2 and Windows Multipoint 2011 can handle 10-20 RemoteFX session. (Multipoint server is made specifically for that)

To connect to the RemoteFX session you can use Thin client/zero client.

If you plan to use windows, Windows 7 machines and Windows Embedded 7 as well. Cheapest option for windows based machines is Windows Embeded Thin Client edition.(which is free if you have MSDN/Technet)

Linux is also able to use RemoteFX but you need to get 3rd party software.

As for ARM I am still investigating the best option, from what I hear 2X has a working Android client for RemoteFX. HP also has 44$-90$ zero clients it seems :/

Keep in mind though for each RemoteFX client you need to legally purchase CALs (yes damn you M$, though they are not enforced)

Another limitation at the moment is that you need to use LAN, I hear a lot of changes will come with Windows 8 including support for WAN.

As far as hardware is concerned you need a SLAT enabled processor, which effectively any new processor i5,i7,llano, even fusion processor like E-350. While specs say to use pro gpus any GPU would work, with a lot of clients you want one with a lot of memory.
 
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I am building this with deals i find online. I would like to use a 6950 1GB if i find one this week. I also need a CPU which i want to be a Phenom X6.

This rig is also going to be my new dedicated shared storage to replace my current ZFS all-in-one setup http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1652833

what you going to use for the clients ? I'm following this because i'd like to build one and play with this setup..

Dash.
 
I am building this with deals i find online. I would like to use a 6950 1GB if i find one this week. I also need a CPU which i want to be a Phenom X6.

This rig is also going to be my new dedicated shared storage to replace my current ZFS all-in-one setup http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1652833

ati 6950, what a coincidence..did you read that forum thread in the video card forum? lol

Though I am going for 2GB since I am gonna need at least 8 clients, and going Intel way here :/..Intel Core i5-2500K or Intel Core i7-2600K (basing my rig based on idle power consumption while having good power output)
 
ati 6950, what a coincidence..did you read that forum thread in the video card forum? lol

Though I am going for 2GB since I am gonna need at least 8 clients, and going Intel way here :/..Intel Core i5-2500K or Intel Core i7-2600K (basing my rig based on idle power consumption while having good power output)

are you able to devote the amount of video ram per client ?

I did find this,
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817602(WS.10).aspx
 
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Do you not need a "workstation" card for it to work?

I messing around with my ESXi set up over the holiday I may have to try this out. (i7, HD6950 2GB)
 
Yeah I saw that, as for resource management..not sure :/..by the looks of the diagram it since more clients are not increasing in double the size it looks like resources are shared rather then dedicated but this may be a matter of configuration.

Do you not need a "workstation" card for it to work?

I messing around with my ESXi set up over the holiday I may have to try this out. (i7, HD6950 2GB)

No, you don't..as long as you have the drivers it will work on consumer cards. Just have good amount of gpu memory depending on amount of clients you want. Based on reading I am assuming 4GB = 20-24 clients, 2GB = 10-12 clients is the suggested amount.
 
Yeah I saw that, as for resource management..not sure :/..by the looks of the diagram it since more clients are not increasing in double the size it looks like resources are shared rather then dedicated but this may be a matter of configuration.



No, you don't..as long as you have the drivers it will work on consumer cards. Just have good amount of gpu memory depending on amount of clients you want. Based on reading I am assuming 4GB = 20-24 clients, 2GB = 10-12 clients is the suggested amount.

You could add more than one 2gb gpu card to gain more clients ? ie, 2-3 3gig cards..
 
You could add more than one 2gb gpu card to gain more clients ? ie, 2-3 3gig cards..

According to Microsoft it seems that way:

"In addition to the previous video memory table, Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1 has been tested for up to 12 virtual machines per GPU, for a total of 24 virtual machines on two physical GPUs, providing the necessary dedicated video memory. This number will continue to be refined in later releases."

The workstation cards go up to 4GB per card. I know multipoint premium server is limited to 20. Not sure if there is a limitation to total amount of users on Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1 but we can safely say 24 users are possible.

Microsoft though never intended RemoteFX to go over 20 clients per server, their goal was that if you need more then 20 per server, you buy multiple servers and they can be all managed from 1 server.
 
Got mine running with a HD5970 using the Win7 x64 11.11 drivers.
With G wireless everything was choppy, with 100mbit videos played OK but moving windows and desktop effects still seemed slow.
You need to have either Win7 Enterprise or Ultimate to get the RFX video driver to load. Once you enable RFX on a VM it wont let you connect with the Hyper-V manager any more which is inconvenient.
Interesting note, the OSX RDP client does not support RFX or I was missing something. I know this isn't that big of a deal for most.

RFX is a cool idea and it will get more interesting as the tech evolves. Also, my first experience with Hyper-V and it was super simple to use. Now time to try something else.
 
I picked up the Phenom X6 1055T for $119 today.

Going to wait and see if there are any good GPU deals on Monday.
 
I just bought all my pieces yesterday....got a bunch of nice deals...

257$ - i7 2600 (yeah I decided to go with the i7 for hyper threading)
220$ - XFX 6950 2gb - newegg had a nice deal +20$ back from mastercard makes it 200$ ;)
060$ - mb - H67 - Decided to go with this one over the Z68 as I dont plan to use any features in the Z68 anyways..there were a few deals but meh wanted a micro-ATX factor.
060$ - ram - 16gb ram...too bad price dropped to 45$ after I ordered :(
035$ - case - Antec 300 :)
120$ - hd - 3TB goflex drive I plan to take apart and inside is a 400$ drive lol
------

I plan to scrap a 600watt OCZ for the time being for PSU until I find a good deal on one that is very power efficient.

752$ total..not bad if I say so myself...

----

oh, btw cactus what setup did you use? Also there are OSX clients that can do RFX..not that I use OSX
here is one:

http://itap-mobile.com/desktop/rdp
 
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i7-930
Asus P6X58D-e
24GB DDR3
64GB C300 @ SataII
HD5970
Intel ET Dual Port to WRT54G
2k8 R2 Datacenter
Win7 Ultimate VM

This is normally my ESXi host but I am moving to a dedicated OI storage box so I had some down time to mess around. I would like to try XenServer but dont have the time ATM.

Yeah, the Microsoft OSX RDP client does not. Should have said that. I still have everything set up on the SSD, I'll try to test with iTap and GbE. I can also see one of the thin clients with HW decoding being quicker than my 07 Macbook for displaying RFX desktops. It would be great to have a few low power clients or a tablet as day to day devices.
 
i7-930
Asus P6X58D-e
24GB DDR3
64GB C300 @ SataII
HD5970
Intel ET Dual Port to WRT54G
2k8 R2 Datacenter
Win7 Ultimate VM

This is normally my ESXi host but I am moving to a dedicated OI storage box so I had some down time to mess around. I would like to try XenServer but dont have the time ATM.

Yeah, the Microsoft OSX RDP client does not. Should have said that. I still have everything set up on the SSD, I'll try to test with iTap and GbE. I can also see one of the thin clients with HW decoding being quicker than my 07 Macbook for displaying RFX desktops. It would be great to have a few low power clients or a tablet as day to day devices.

I see, just trying to figure out why it would be so slow to move windows around. I mean microsoft advertises that 10mbps(stable) should be enough bandwidth and latency below 20ms. Wireless G aside your 100mbps connection should be plenty to run RemoteFX lag free :/

what I am trying to do personally is to try to make a cloud network for my house. I got a centon TV card as well that will go into the pc. using that and thin/zero clients I plan to hook up every TV in my house to make them into smart TVs(with no need for cable boxes and centralized DVR). Then use remaining clients to make virtual computers for web surfing in every room. Then use Tablets and cellphones to control everything.

Still thinking on which technology to implement and will have to test which one cuts it, I prefer to make it with as little wires as possible so wireless is my 1st hope in trying to achieve(150/300/450), if not I'll try the powerline tech with the new 500mbps/1gbps...cause I really don't want to rewire a gigabit wire through the house :/

I think cloud computing is going to be the future, right now we all are going for phones/tablets/pcs with higher and higher specs. But imagine making cellphones instead of powerful, power efficient so much that they can be solar charged to full and have infinite power. Then all the processing power comes from the cloud. I have an LTE phone that I tether and get 10 - 36mbps download speeds and 5 - 8mbps upload speeds. My ping locally is around 75-80ms and other side of the US is around 150ms. In 2013 they are advertising LTE-Advanced which will be 10x faster then LTE...so yeah I can't wait...:p
 
what I am trying to do personally is to try to make a cloud network for my house. I got a centon TV card as well that will go into the pc. using that and thin/zero clients I plan to hook up every TV in my house to make them into smart TVs(with no need for cable boxes and centralized DVR). Then use remaining clients to make virtual computers for web surfing in every room.

I had a similar idea, this is why I think RFX is so interesting. I have a ceton card too. lol
 
I had a similar idea, this is why I think RFX is so interesting. I have a ceton card too. lol

Do you have to install a windows 7 for each connection ? or is it one windows 7 machine and all users connect to that ?
 
so like 15 windows 7 licenses :( lame :(

would be cheaper to buy a 25cal of 2008r2 and use rdp..

RemoteFX is RDP 7.1. When you use it you need to get 1 CAL per client.

If you mean using windows 7 as a host machine, I think windows 7 is limited to 1 RemoteFX connection.
 
RemoteFX is RDP 7.1. When you use it you need to get 1 CAL per client.

If you mean using windows 7 as a host machine, I think windows 7 is limited to 1 RemoteFX connection.

That's my point right there,

TO make this usefull if building a 20 client server, you need 20 thin clients, 20 vm's 20 windows 7 licenses.

you need 80+ gigs of ram for 4 gig's each client.. THEN you need to think about video ram per client.
 
That's my point right there,

TO make this usefull if building a 20 client server, you need 20 thin clients, 20 vm's 20 windows 7 licenses.

you need 80+ gigs of ram for 4 gig's each client.. THEN you need to think about video ram per client.

You don't need that much ram. Keep in mind the resources are shared, unless your expecting all 20 clients to play crysis simultaneously.

Microsoft recommendation for 15-20 clients that do "Productivity plus: Frequent video use by all users"

CPU: 4C+MT or 8C
RAM: 8 GB

As for GPU recommendations for some reason they keep it hidden but according to AMD their latest 4GB firepro card can support 22-24 remotefx users. Thus expect 1GB =5 users.

If you plan to just play around with it I suggest downloading the 60 day trial of MultiPoint Server 2011 and you can extend the 60 days up to 240 days. (If you purchase this for educational use CALS go like at 30$ and server software goes for 110$ retail, cheaper through 3rd parties of course)

As for thin clients either use windows 7 thin client edition(based on windows embeded) or use ARM based Zero clients.
 
You don't need that much ram. Keep in mind the resources are shared, unless your expecting all 20 clients to play crysis simultaneously.

Microsoft recommendation for 15-20 clients that do "Productivity plus: Frequent video use by all users"

CPU: 4C+MT or 8C
RAM: 8 GB

As for GPU recommendations for some reason they keep it hidden but according to AMD their latest 4GB firepro card can support 22-24 remotefx users. Thus expect 1GB =5 users.

If you plan to just play around with it I suggest downloading the 60 day trial of MultiPoint Server 2011 and you can extend the 60 days up to 240 days. (If you purchase this for educational use CALS go like at 30$ and server software goes for 110$ retail, cheaper through 3rd parties of course)

As for thin clients either use windows 7 thin client edition(based on windows embeded) or use ARM based Zero clients.

Kick ass, i just looked, technet.microsoft.com has this :) and it's in my subscription YEAH!!

now to plot this device and see,, Wonder if you can get a thin client that does dual monitors or the arm based units that does dual monitors...
 
Kick ass, i just looked, technet.microsoft.com has this :) and it's in my subscription YEAH!!

now to plot this device and see,, Wonder if you can get a thin client that does dual monitors or the arm based units that does dual monitors...

Yeah, with TechNet you get windows 7 thin clients for free and I think multipoint server too(not sure)

As for muti-monitors it might be a little tricky but who knows. You should check these out:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=18482


http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8290


Edit: Oh forgot to mention, alternatively there is something called a Zero clients which have no resources of their own and rely sole on clod computing. HP sells some at around 44$ - 90$ a piece. I don't know how well they work, just giving it as a reference if interested:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/12454-12454-321959-338927-5112717.html
 
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Yeah, with TechNet you get windows 7 thin clients for free and I think multipoint server too(not sure)

As for muti-monitors it might be a little tricky but who knows. You should check these out:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=18482


http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8290


Edit: Oh forgot to mention, alternatively there is something called a Zero clients which have no resources of their own and rely sole on clod computing. HP sells some at around 44$ - 90$ a piece. I don't know how well they work, just giving it as a reference if interested:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/12454-12454-321959-338927-5112717.html

Id like to buy the dm3730 beagleboard-xm, it uses hdmi and has a few more usb & other ports.
 
Ok, this sucks...apparently even though windows multipoint server 2011 is windows 2008 R2 it won't let it install Windows Media Services for Windows 2008 :/...after reading around it seems Windows Media Services is very version specific...so much that even international versions of Windows 2008 R2 don't work...

Wondering if I should try to edit it and force it in, or just install windows 2008 r2 standard/enterprise/datacenter..question is which...*sigh*
 
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