Why my Wpf application (on full software mode) runs slowly on Citrix server

Question

I've WPF application. Because our Citrix doesn't have a independant graphic carte. I've to set RenderMode en Software only with :

RenderOptions.ProcessRenderMode = System.Windows.Interop.RenderMode.SoftwareOnly;

It runs still fluently in my sony duo 13:

Windows 8.1;
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U CPU @ 1.60GHz (4 CPUs), ~1.6GHz
8192MB RAM
Intel(R) HD Graphics Family; 1792 MB approx memory total;
DirectDraw speedup activated; Direct3D speedup activated; AGP texture activated

But it runs bad on Citrix server (only one application executed):

Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard 64 bits (6.1m version 7601)
VMware Virtual Platform
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU x5670 @ 2.93GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.9GHz
4096MB RAM
No graphic carte info

I proved my application was running on mode Software with using Windows Performance Tools, all my window of my application is colored by purple tint (it means draw software rendering)

Except Graphic Carte, our Citrix server is more powerful than my hyperbook Sony, but why it works bad?

Thanks

Answer 1

Because your Sony doesn't have to send all the graphical updates over the network to another machine. The network kills graphical performance when you're remoting applications. This is particularly noticeable when using mobile devices which are using 3G or WIFI since the latency is quite high. Every single graphical update your app makes is encoding into a JPEG and then sent over the wire to the receiver. So you're looking at 10's if not 100's of ms for updates to be seen on the client depending on network conditions.

Performance for graphically intensive apps is getting better on Citrix. Later versions of the server/receiver support H264 encoding which improves performance considerably, e.g.

http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/11/06/go-supersonic-with-xendesktop-7-x-bandwidth-supercodecs/

Other technology like Framehawk is also being integrated in the Citrix stack which improves performance in poor network conditions:

http://blogs.citrix.com/2014/01/08/framehawk-will-take-our-hdx-technology-to-the-limit/