What's new

RDP to Surface Pro 3 much slower than to a "normal" PC

Eos Pengwern

New Member
I use RDP a lot, and with the normal Remote Desktop application I can work from home on my office PC, or from my office on my home PC (which are separated by 30 miles) as though I were sitting at the computer's own keyboard.

However, if I try to RDP to my Surface Pro 3, even when it's sitting on the desk alongside me, the performance is awful - the latencies can be several seconds and I may as well not bother trying to scroll the screen with the mouse. If anything, things have got slightly worse since I upgraded my Surface Pro and my home PC to Windows 10, though since doing that I haven't noticed any difference with my other RDP connections (the office PC is still on Windows 7).

I've got an inkling that the reason may be connected with the much higher-resolution screen on the Surface Pro and the way that is is being rescaled during RDP, since my other observation is that when I RDP to my Surface Pro the screen always looks a lot more blurry then when I'm doing other RDP sessions. Yet I can't find a way to rectify this. I normally select "Full Screen" resolution which seems to scale the full desktop to my monitor size (1920x1080, which is quite a bit smaller than the Surface Pro's native 2160 x 1440). Selecting a lower screen resolution in the Remote Desktop application gives me a smaller window with scroll bars, but the same size text.

I've tried using the standard Windows Remote Desktop Connection application (which has been around since Windows 7), the new Remote Desktop (Preview) App from the Windows 10 App Store, and the venerable Remote Desktop Connection Manager v2.2 application; in none of them can I find a way around this.

Note that I'm not complaining about using RDP from my Surface Pro to a computer with lower resolution, and getting text which is too small to read: there must be dozens of posts about that on the internet, all saying "use Remote Desktop Connection Manager", but again that its not my problem here. Maybe it's nothing to do with screen resolution at all. All I want is to be able to sit at my desktop PC and use RDP to view the screen on my Surface Pro 3 which is six inches from my elbow, with speed and clarity comparable to that with which I can view the screen on my other computer which is 30 miles away.

Is there some better way to do this?
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Is the SP3 is connected via wireless??? Connection speed? Transfer Rate?
You may be right about the scaling...so if you set your SP3 resolution to match your monitor how does it work?
 
OP
E

Eos Pengwern

New Member
I use a wired Gigabit connection when in the office; at home my desktop PC is wired and the Surface Pro is wireless. It seems to make little difference.

I just tried setting the screen resolution on the SP3 to 1920 x 1080 and then connecting to it from my desktop PC. That may in fact be the solution: the screen still looks a little blurry (as it does on the SP3's own screen at that resolution) but the performance is much better. The latency has gone, and I can scroll!

I'll stick with this arrangement for a bit and see how it works out.
 
Top