Era, I'm afraid you're sleeping on GeForce Now

[KC-Slater]

I have tried the free-tier and had a good experience with it (I was using a very beefy MacBook Pro FWIW) despite the MASSIVE queue to wait for a rig. I'm considering subscribing for 6 months to give it the old college try, but I have a few questions that I'm having trouble finding straight answers to:

-I would be playing on a 1440p monitor—can I achieve this res at 60hz with the first paid tier? If not, will 1080p look bad on my display?

-I am interested in playing using a base-model M1 MacBook Air—how much (if at all) does local hardware impact the experience? I have a solid wired internet connection.

-Are there any other blind spots/things I should consider? I have a fully Apple ecosystem of hardware, and consoles. No means to use it outside of my iOS or Mac computers as far as I know…

 

[Zedelima]

So i now use a VPN to acess the USA servers of geforce now and even with latency (i get 110ms) its soooo much better than the brazilian one and is cheaper lol.

The 4k is crispy, the 4080 with rtx is amazing and performance of everything is pure magic.
The latency is not…ideal, but is not bad. Honestly after 10 min i barely notice it, specially if i put the stream at 30fps.

What is the criteria of Nvidia to put games in the service? I feel that some big releases are not there.
Its up to them or the publishers?

 

[Ry.]

So i now use a VPN to acess the USA servers of geforce now and even with latency (i get 110ms) its soooo much better than the brazilian one and is cheaper lol.

The 4k is crispy, the 4080 with rtx is amazing and performance of everything is pure magic.
The latency is not…ideal, but is not bad. Honestly after 10 min i barely notice it, specially if i put the stream at 30fps.

What is the criteria of Nvidia to put games in the service? I feel that some big releases are not there.
Its up to them or the publishers?

Click to shrink...

They need permission from the publishers of the game, that's all. It's kind of crazy anyone would say no, just turn down another income stream, but here we are.

 

[wafflebrain]

So i now use a VPN to acess the USA servers of geforce now and even with latency (i get 110ms) its soooo much better than the brazilian one and is cheaper lol.

The 4k is crispy, the 4080 with rtx is amazing and performance of everything is pure magic.
The latency is not…ideal, but is not bad. Honestly after 10 min i barely notice it, specially if i put the stream at 30fps.

What is the criteria of Nvidia to put games in the service? I feel that some big releases are not there.
Its up to them or the publishers?

Click to shrink...

Definitely up to the publishers, but when the service first launched I think it was possible to play not officially listed titles (ie most of your Steam library) but that changed as the service got more popular. I assume some publisher complained and ruined the fun.

 

[Ingueferroque]

I will never want to stream games over playing them locally. Never.

 

[Ry.]

I have tried the free-tier and had a good experience with it (I was using a very beefy MacBook Pro FWIW) despite the MASSIVE queue to wait for a rig. I'm considering subscribing for 6 months to give it the old college try, but I have a few questions that I'm having trouble finding straight answers to:

-I would be playing on a 1440p monitor—can I achieve this res at 60hz with the first paid tier? If not, will 1080p look bad on my display?

-I am interested in playing using a base-model M1 MacBook Air—how much (if at all) does local hardware impact the experience? I have a solid wired internet connection.

-Are there any other blind spots/things I should consider? I have a fully Apple ecosystem of hardware, and consoles. No means to use it outside of my iOS or Mac computers as far as I know…

Click to shrink...

The M1 would work just fine I would assume, it doesn't take much hardware power to stream.

As for the tier to pay for, I will say I quite enjoyed 120fps on a VRR display. Alan Wake 2 was amazing. It sort of depends on the games you want to play I suppose.

Being on the Mac ecosystem shouldn't matter at all. You could stream games with your iPad even I believe.

 

[Ry.]

I will never want to stream games over playing them locally. Never.

Click to shrink...

I thought the same till I found out I have less latency streaming than I do playing locally on a console. (PC gaming still beats it however)

 

[wafflebrain]

I will never want to stream games over playing them locally. Never.

Click to shrink...

Good for you? Not everyone can afford equivalent rigs like the 4080 tier that this service provides, so for people like me this has become an amazing alternative being able to play almost all major releases over the past 6 plus months. Obviously if money is no consideration and you can get your own equivalent or better gaming PC this service isn't even something you'd consider anyway so seems like a bit of a moot thing to feel the need to express anyhow 🤷‍♂️

Also I feel those vocally against cloud gaming are increasingly approaching old man yells at cloud (heh) territory and likely haven't even tried the better solutions for themselves. In a blind test I honestly doubt you could tell a difference. Also...


View: https://youtu.be/B2Yf6QbNxzE?si=zASsTRzTaYGDRV-G

Point being this stuff is getting better and will only continue to do so.

 

[Ingueferroque]

Good for you? Not everyone can afford equivalent rigs like the 4080 tier that this service provides, so for people like me this has become an amazing alternative being able to play almost all major releases over the past 6 plus months. Obviously if money is no consideration and you can get your own equivalent or better gaming PC this service isn't even something you'd consider anyway so seems like a bit of a moot thing to feel the need to express anyhow 🤷‍♂️

Also I feel those vocally against cloud gaming are increasingly approaching old man yells at cloud (heh) territory and likely haven't even tried the better solutions for themselves. In a blind test I honestly doubt you could tell a difference. Also...


View: https://youtu.be/B2Yf6QbNxzE?si=zASsTRzTaYGDRV-G

Point being this stuff is getting better and will only continue to do so.

Click to shrink...

Was it something I wasn't allowed to post in this thread? It seemed relevant?

And I play most of my games on Steam Deck, I don't need ultra settings on every game, I prefer frame rate and input response over all. I'm fine with you wanting to call me old man for holding this view.

Subscription models and cloud-streaming are a no-go for someone that likes to go back in their library and play older games that have long been delisted from sale, etc.

 

[Lilly-Anne]

Was it something I wasn't allowed to post in this thread? It seemed relevant?

And I play most of my games on Steam Deck, I don't need ultra settings on every game, I prefer frame rate and input response over all. I'm fine with you wanting to call me old man for holding this view.

Subscription models and cloud-streaming are a no-go for someone that likes to go back in their library and play older games that have long been delisted from sale, etc.

Click to shrink...

That's something you can still do with cloud streaming, to be fair. Boosteroid, Shadow PC, Maximum Settings all allow you to play your own owned games.

 

[Tmespe]

I just wish they'd support 4k streaming for any other box than the Nvidia shield so I could easily use it on my TV. I got a month to play Total War Warhammer 3 at full settings 1440p on my PC and it's been really great. Even for a game with a lot of small text and icons.

 

[Listai]

In a blind test I honestly doubt you could tell a difference.

Click to shrink...

You definitely (and easily) can.

I wish I couldn't tell the difference, it would make this way more viable for me.

 

[Sorder]

In a blind test I honestly doubt you could tell a difference.

Click to shrink...

I'm a huge fan of GeForce Now in its current state but yeah I can easily tell that it's a streamed image. The bitrate is still quite low I feel, and an obvious point they can (and probably will) improve on in the future.

 

[haziq]

I ain't missing a damn thing from deciding not to pay Nvidia $20 to play my own games.

EDIT: Damn, you don't even own the games. You can't even stream your own game library to any device? Yeah, I'm good on that.

 

[Tired Repairman]

It's a cool way to access your games and i use the free tier from time to time. Honestly, it surprises me how good it feels compared to xCloud.

BUT

The tiered pricing turns me off, and as the owner of a mid-high range Nvidia GPU (RTX 4070 ti) i think it would be neat to have some kind of privilege (i dunno... a discount or something? How about a trial of a couple of months for the super duper 4090 rig?) not to mention the strategy of randomly limit access to the montly version of the priority tier, pushing you to get the super duper 4090 tier or just a multi-month subscription.

Also, whenever i try to play ETS2 i'm kicked for inactivity because they have so few servers for the game it the queues go beyond 30 min.

 

[polychron]

I'm a huge fan of GeForce Now in its current state but yeah I can easily tell that it's a streamed image. The bitrate is still quite low I feel, and an obvious point they can (and probably will) improve on in the future.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, only platform I've used it on where I've not been keenly aware of it having bitrate/IQ issues is Steam Deck, and I think that's just because the 800p screen there is just so low information to begin with that it kinda _smooths out_ the image. I use it a lot there, to play games that the steam deck couldn't run, but never find myself wanting to use the desktop app due to the aforementioned issues. Maybe my internet just isn't good enough to get the image quality I'd like?

 

[plagiarize]

I ain't missing a damn thing from deciding not to pay Nvidia $20 to play my own games.

EDIT: Damn, you don't even own the games. You can't even stream your own game library to any device? Yeah, I'm good on that.

Click to shrink...

????
You can't play your entire library but supported games are indeed your games on Steam or EGS and you can play them natively and locally.

 

[LCGeek]

I just wish they'd support 4k streaming for any other box than the Nvidia shield so I could easily use it on my TV. I got a month to play Total War Warhammer 3 at full settings 1440p on my PC and it's been really great. Even for a game with a lot of small text and icons.

Click to shrink...

Even if they did you would need every chain in the link of routing to support it as well, as in capacity which is about 25 to 40Mbps.

 

[Cheesecakebobby]

I was interested to see what the offering would be for Japan when Nvidia announced they would stop partnering with Softbank (though are still partnering with AU) and instead offer their own service, but the pricing does not take into account regional differences (or the tanking yen). One month of the ultimate tier for example is 3 times the cost of game pass ultimate. I was thinking about using it rather than buying a PC or next-gen console, but I should have taken a look at the extortionate prices Nvidia charge for their cards here as an indication of how high they would set their fees.

 

[Zedelima]

I will never want to stream games over playing them locally. Never.

Click to shrink...

Well, if you live in place like me where a pc like geforcenow has would cost AT LEAST 20k, you would.

Im happy with streaming

Edit: i also use the pc app, and i put the streaming in the "custom" mode and uped the bitrate to 75mb…tbh i cant see a single artifact.
I mean, im sure that if i see it side to side i could tell a difference but…my fiancee never could tell that was a stream

 

[Alucardx23]

Was it something I wasn't allowed to post in this thread? It seemed relevant?

And I play most of my games on Steam Deck, I don't need ultra settings on every game, I prefer frame rate and input response over all. I'm fine with you wanting to call me old man for holding this view.

Subscription models and cloud-streaming are a no-go for someone that likes to go back in their library and play older games that have long been delisted from sale, etc.

Click to shrink...

That's the thing, you are not realizing that it is possible to have a lower latency by playing on GFN. That's not to say that this is always the case on every scenario, but it is definitely something most people don't think about. Most people think cloud gaming = higher latency and that is not the case. You mentioned framerate and input response, GFN can stream up to 240hz and if you have a good ping to a GFN server, you will have those two factors improved over playing on a Steamdeck.

 

[TitanicFall]

I got 6 months of this free as an AT&T subscriber.

 

[Scarecrow]

Being unable to afford a new computer for a bit, Geforce now has been great at running anything my Steam Deck has issues with. Instead of running something like Cyberpunk at low settings for 2 hrs of playtime, I can stream it at near max settings for double or more of that playtime.

When I can finally afford a new rig, it won't be as useful, but for those with no money for expensive cards, it's a great way to enjoy those heavy games in my steam backlog.