The installation of NICE DCV on Windows is straight-forward. For the best performance there are some prerequisites.
NICE DCV already performs very well on CPU only systems by streaming the desktop via CPU encoded H.264 stream. The best performance will be available leveraging a GPU. GPUs offer – especially for 3D heavy applications – among others the following advantages:
- DirectX and OpenGL hardware acceleration for applications
- Hardware acceleration for H.264 video streaming encoding
- Customizable server monitor resolutions
- Multi-monitor support
NICE DCV can be installed on any typical Windows OS or Windows Server to allow for best-performance remote Desktop access including 3D acceleration in case the machine is equipped with a nVidia or AMD GPU. DCV supports working from home scenarios with the best available performance compared to RDP and other tools.
In case you are interested in our ready-made Windows DCV AWS AMI to immediately rock and roll with DCV on AWS or give DCV a try here you go:
- High-End Windows Desktop – NICE DCV for NVIDIA-GPU with GRID drivers (g4)
- High-End Windows Desktop – NICE DCV for AMD-GPU Performance (g4ad)
Here is our usage guide for the Windows AMI: NICE DCV for Windows with UDP/QUIC (GPU, g4 with NVIDIA GRID Drivers).
We have benchmarked GRID and Gaming drivers and GRID drivers perform better overall – here are the results: nVidia driver benchmarks on AWS.
The DCV QUIC/UDP protocol offers significantly higher frame-rates e.g. attractive for media artists or in difficult network conditions with higher latencies.
NICE DCV on Windows Installation – Step by Step
After installing the respective GPU driver in case needed (see below for more information) you can continue with the NICE DCV installation e.g. via RDP:
- Download the NICE DCV MSI file from the DCV download page: https://download.nice-dcv.com/
- There you will find a DCV Server for Windows similar to the screenshot to the right. The URL is similar to https://d1uj6qtbmh3dt5.cloudfront.net/2020.1/Servers/nice-dcv-server-x64-Release-2020.1-9012.msi depending on the respective DCV version
- Run the MSI installer which will show the installation wizard:
- Click “Next”
- Read, accept the EULA and click “Next”
- Select if you want to use “USB device remotization” and click “Next”
- Keep the defaults or configure your firewall later to allow incoming connections to 8443 and startup behavior of the DCV server – then click “Next”
- Specify the owner for the automatic console session. Or, to prevent the automatic console session from starting after the installation is complete, select “No, I will create the session manually”. Click “Next”
- Click “Install” which will after a minute show this completion screen:
- Optional: Verify that the DCV server is running.
Open “Services” and search for the DCV server which should be in “Running” state:
- Connect to your DCV session at port 8443 by default. Don’t forget to allow inbound traffic on port 8443 in the firewall and/or security group.
After opening a web browser with https://IP_OR_SERVER_NAME:8443 replacing IP_OR_SERVER_NAME with your server address you should see the DCV login screen:
Now login with e.g. the Administrator user and password (or the session owner specified during installation).
In case you have a RDP session running this will be disconnected as DCV will replace the remote desktop protocol. Please see below in case you want to disable DCV authentication for testing. Please note that the best performance and USB device integration will be available with the native DCV client on Windows, MacOS or Linux.
To test the DCV performance install your favorite 3D application in case you can leverage a GPU or just try how DCV works for you with your applications.
You can check the metrics of your DCV connection after connecting to the DCV session via Settings (upper left wheel) -> Streaming Mode (Keep “Best responsiveness”) -> Display Streaming Metrics.