On my new and more powerfull Windows 10 PC I found AVD surprisingly slower. After some time I came to the conclusion that it is caused by highDPI screen (when connected to external monitor, its much faster). Why is that?
I created this question only to be answered straight away for other people to benefit. This is caused by DPI optimizations done by Win10 and has surprising effects on the outcoming speed of emulator.
To fix, go to Android SDK dir, for me it is
C:\Users\XXXX\AppData\Local\Android\sdk\tools
Now right-click emulator.exe, open Properties, go to Compatibility and select Disable DPI Optimizations under Settings
Do the same for emulator-x86.exe.
Restart your AVD. Not only will the emulator be brighter and clearer, itll also be more responsive and much faster to work with when debugging.
I realise many people consider this obvious, and they changed these settings straight away, but it didnt occure to me as Android Studio is High DPI monitor friendly and doesnt require to be launched in optimised way by Windows. So when emulators are launched from within a highdpi supporting app, I would expect them to be also highdpi compatible.