Need Help: After Effects 2023 Poor Performance on Multi-User RDP Setup

Hi everyone,

I’m running a setup with one main workstation and six HP T430 zero clients.
The zero clients connect via Remote Desktop, and each user works under their own Windows account.

Main workstation specs:

• Model: HP Z8 G4

• OS: Windows 10 Pro

• CPU: 2 × Intel Xeon Platinum 8158 @ 3.00 GHz (2.99 GHz)

• RAM: 256 GB

• GPU: 2 × NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 (8 GB VRAM each)

• Storage: 256 GB SSD + 8 TB HDD (Western Digital)

The problem occurs with Adobe After Effects 2023 — performance is extremely poor.
I often get “Out of Memory” errors, the system freezes for several seconds, and all zero clients disconnect.

What’s strange is that the GPUs are almost not being used, while the CPU and RAM are fully loaded.
I would expect the GPUs to handle more of the rendering and preview tasks.

Interestingly, other Adobe apps like Premiere Pro 2024, Photoshop 2024, and Illustrator 2024 work flawlessly and run smoothly.

My questions:

• Has anyone experienced a similar issue?

• Is there any specific setting in After Effects, Windows, or Remote Desktop required to enable proper GPU usage?

• And if I plan to use Cinema 4D, Blender, Maya, or Moho in the future, am I likely to face the same problem?

Any advice, optimization tips, or shared experience regarding GPU usage in RDP environments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot for your time 🙏