Creating Citrix Policies for NVIDIA vGPU#
This section outlines the required Citrix and Microsoft policy settings to enable NVIDIA vGPU usage within Citrix environments.
Citrix Configuration#
Citrix HDX Graphics, formerly known as HDX 3D Pro, supports GPU-based rendering and video encoding by default. To ensure optimal performance:
Confirm that the policy “Use video codec for compression” is not set to “Do not use”. The default value is Use when preferred.
Ensure that “Use hardware encoding for video” is enabled (default). This allows the VDA to offload video encoding to the GPU (NVENC) when available.
Starting with CVAD 2311, Automatic Video Codec Selection is enabled by default. The system dynamically negotiates the best available codec, AV1, H.265, or H.264 based on client and server capabilities.
No additional Citrix policies are required to enable GPU acceleration for DirectX, OpenGL, and WPF workloads.
For more information:
Microsoft Group Policy for RDS GPU Support#
By default, Remote Desktop Services (RDS) sessions on Windows Server 2016 and later use the Microsoft Basic Render Driver, which disables GPU usage. To enable GPU rendering in RDS or Citrix-hosted sessions on these servers:
Group Policy Path:
Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Remote Session Environment
To use the virtual GPU in RDS sessions, enable the Use the hardware default graphics adapter for all Remote Desktop Services sessions setting in the group policy.