Problem :
So I have two boxes. A Linux box, and a Windows box. I run a bunch of applications on Linux, accessed via X Windows on the windows box.
My Windows box has a pretty powerful set of GPUs – I’m running 4 monitors, and I of course put different X Windows windows on each.
I’m about to change the Linux box, and it occurred to me I’m not quite sure the impact to my setup of the GPU on it changing.
In the above configuration, does the GPU on the Linux box make any difference to performance? Presumably it just needs enough VRAM to power all the windows, but that’s all there is to consider, and the fact that they’re on multiple monitors on the Windows side is irrelevant?
Solution :
The rendering of the windows is done on the X server (Windows). The X client, does not do anything with video processing. In fact, I have even run remote X applications on servers without any graphics adapter at all (Sun SPARC hosts), which ran fine.
Of course if you run any Linux applications that require CUDA or OpenCL capabilities, those would require a GPU in the Linux box. X is only about display, not about other GPU functions.