MATLAB: For fastest graphics performance with remote displays, should I upgrade the client or server graphics hardware

Question

I would like to use remote graphics displays such as X11, VNC, Remote Desktop Connection or Terminal Server. I am purchasing graphics hardware and would like to know which machine will perform the graphics rendering.

Answer 1

When using remote displays, the most important bottleneck to keep in mind is usually the network connection, and not the graphics hardware of the machine.

The client graphics hardware does virtually all graphics hardware work, while the server does most software rendering tasks. However, when trying to improve graphics performance, the biggest benefit is often to use local displays instead of remote ones.

For example, if your application consists of a long numeric simulation, followed by an interactive graphics-intensive visualization session, it may make sense to perform the simulation on the server machine, save the results to a MAT-file, transfer them to the client, and perform your plotting or other visualization there. Although your client machine may not be as fast as your server, it may have better graphics performance than a remote session connected to the server.