Up For Debate - Has GeForce Now convinced you cloud gaming can work?

Written by Jon Sutton on Sun, Feb 9, 2020 2:30 PM

After years of dancing around with beta tests and lofty promises, this week GeForce Now was finally unleashed on the world. Nvidia’s cloud gaming solution was pitched as the ideal halfway house between traditional PC gaming and the all-in solution offered by Google Stadia. It’s cloud gaming but using your existing PC gaming library, offering an additional way to play rather than trying to entirely replace local gaming.

GeForce Now is available to try out right now for free, although the quality of your experience is going to differ wildly depending on your vicinity to Nvidia’s data centres. The free package offers maximum session lengths of one hour, at which point you get kicked out and then have to sign back in again. Stumping up $5 a month nets users a Founders account. This ups the session length to six hours and also adds ray-tracing support.

GeForce Now launched - Stream your library of PC games regardless of client

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks getting to grips with GeForce Now and, overall, the results have been mightily impressive. It’s one of those rare moments in gaming where it feels a little bit magic; like you’re doing something which really ought not work. But it absolutely does. It’s imperfect, sure, but considering the obvious downsides such as latency and data guzzling, what Nvidia has achieved here is still an impressive feat.

GeForce Now Review - Do we have a Stadia Killer on our hands?

By now, most of you curious enough to try out GeForce Now have probably done so. If you haven’t, you can download it now from here.

So, what are your impressions of GeForce Now so far? Is it something you can see yourself paying for? Does it even work on your connection? Let us know how you’re finding it in the comments section below!

Has GeForce Now convinced you cloud gaming can work?

Which version of GeForce Now would you get?

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15:15 Feb-12-2020

If I understand this correctly, does this allow you to play the games in your library from their gaming servers? So you still need to buy the games, but only pay a little for the hardware?
If it's 5.50 euro per month, it will cost 66 euro per year. Do this 10 years and you'll pay 660 euro. That's two generations of PC upgrade cycles for the price of a budget gaming pc!
Why wouldn't you want this? Get that sweet 4k monitor and start playing! (oh and latency things? Yeah, I don't really mind the extra 20ms of ping, it never made a difference for me)

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15:17 Feb-12-2020

Okay, 1080p60 monitor as they don't stream 4k yet, but still

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20:13 Feb-11-2020

Cloud gaming on PSNow is ropey but at least I get some new games to try on my PC. This allows me to cloud stream my PC games while i'm at my PC .. don't get it! Okay, i'm being tongue in cheek but its seriously expensive for what you get, great for people who have got old hardware I guess?

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15:18 Feb-12-2020

Expensive? Check the post above which I just made. It's way cheaper than buying a gaming desktop (that can actually do RT stuff)

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16:50 Feb-11-2020

I haven't tried it yet..

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20:04 Feb-10-2020

I will always have my own hardware, but GeForce Now is a good option for people that cannot afford to upgrade their parts every few years. Nothing will ever match local hardware in latency, overall performance and visual quality.

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19:12 Feb-10-2020

I installed rtx quake in Steam, click play, and I see a window - your system does not support rtx. and what kind of video cards does the service have if I launched it on my 1070 before. The important thing was what the first experience

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09:11 Feb-11-2020

The free version of GeForce Now doesn't support RTX

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21:55 Feb-11-2020

Last I tried GeForce Now I was allotted a Quadro P4000 GPU. I'm not even sure they give you GeForce cards, due to the fact they run virtualized environments there.

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17:42 Feb-10-2020

Geforce NOW is Stadia's killer, nearly the same performance, you don't need to pay for it, games library is huge, you can play already bought games. I just don't see any reason to go for Stadia.

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19:15 Feb-10-2020

buy a game, pay for good internet. not. not. not .

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14:03 Feb-11-2020

That largely depends on where you live, so price alone doesnt necessarily mean good internet. Your location also will affect latency and quality depending on where the servers are located.

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04:49 Feb-10-2020

I was pretty impressed when I tried it. Tested a few games including multiplayer games and didn't notice much latency.

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23:23 Feb-09-2020

Personally, I would say GFN definitely is better than Stadia, considering it is additive, since it only adds options and you still provide your own library. Which is great, because now you do have library which won't go away, if GFN gets dropped. As for gaming, I doubt it will ever be good enough for everyone, but I doubt it will convert PC gamers that fast.It still is connection dependent,...

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23:26 Feb-09-2020

... which will always be a problem. And I doubt it will ever convert people to it, especially if they are fans of games which do require fast reaction. But as for a thing that you use to play on the go, or even to not go through problems of hauling high end PC around, GFN doesn't look bad for AAA singleplayer games. I still think Microsofts version is probably best, due to Game Pass.

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23:28 Feb-09-2020

But I do think cloud gaming is something that will grow long term. As connection caps go higher, internet speeds inevitably go higher, it could be viable way of gaming on some cheap office desktop for AAA games, especially singleplayer. Maybe even less competitively on multiplayer. And it would allow you to get chap PC that can play old and indie games, but can't handle AAA.

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23:32 Feb-09-2020

That is provided prices stay low enough. Which we will have to see, for 5USD GFN definitely is good, that is like 60USD per year and 300USD per 5 years, which is what PC lasts you, but you can game on chap PC, hence it can be cheaper than gaming PC, however it depends on pricing staying close to that and not imposing too hard playtime limitations.

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23:34 Feb-09-2020

Though if they drop session limits too low, it really won't be worth it. 6h might not be plenty for more dedicated gamers, but there are also plenty of people who will find 6h to be plenty. But still, at least GFN, unlike Stadia, actually has potential target audience.

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17:28 Feb-11-2020

if a non-stop 6h gaming session isn't enough for you then you need medical help lol :D

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20:40 Feb-11-2020

Bruh 36 hours sessions are not enough for me, but I no longer have the time. XD

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22:37 Feb-11-2020

Who needs sleep? If you drink enough energy drinks you can literally shoot for the starts, see them sounds and top score boards in gaming... :-D But on more serious note, on free days I can easily clock in more than 6h.

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12:07 Feb-13-2020

But I'm not kidding during cold free weeks 36 hour sessions were a regular thing for me, though I only started drinking caffeine when they added it derby cola when they revamped it in 2017.
For the past two years though I'm lucky if I even play every day.

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22:53 Feb-13-2020

I thought it was more in between, bit of joke and bit of truth. Still, nice. My sessions were usually up to about 14h top. Not sure why, but I never thought to do 24h or more, I guess since my parents were very strict about that "hell no", since it wouldn't be out of character for me. Though since I am working full time, I did have to reduce it a lot. I still squeeze in at least few hours everyday

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23:11 Feb-13-2020

Yeah, my parents let me do whatever at home, so I had no problem with staying up as much as I wanted to.

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20:42 Feb-09-2020

I'm interested, I won't be able to afford to update my hardware for quite some time...

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20:15 Feb-09-2020

See that's the problem, it works. Cloud gaming should be burnt, buried and exploded. Screw Cloud Gaming, may it die 100x times faster than it came.

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13:41 Feb-10-2020

Something works, is helpful, cheap, in addition to your library
Gamers: buuurn it. It's my way or none at all.



The entitlement is real. And that's putting it mildly

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16:25 Feb-10-2020

When steam was on the rise, I didn't mind it, until one day I couldn't buy a single physical game without a stupid DRM key in it(on PC)... This time it's zero tolerance, full on boycot and absolute revolt against this crap. Going from one evil to a much bigger evil? No thanks.

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07:37 Feb-11-2020

Well unlike stadia the games are on the platform of your choice and unlike stadia it isnt advertising it as a replacement for pc´s/consoles its just a option alongside them.

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08:58 Feb-11-2020

Doesn't matter, along one success others will emerge.

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20:34 Feb-11-2020

Your unreasonable anger reminds me of the simpson meme "Old Man Yells at Cloud" . How did cloud gaming hurt you? Just let it be people who want to use it use it. I do understand the fast death of physical media because of convenience, unknowingly giving more control to IP holder and owning slowly becomes lease.

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20:35 Feb-11-2020

The idea is to kill it before it has a chance to bloom... it's going hurt harder than all the DRMs like Steam, Origin, Battle.net, Uplay, Epic, etc, etc. Those are absolute garbage, streaming is dumpster fire.

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22:00 Feb-11-2020

Well... I can see both points of view.
On one side - I can see it being genuinely useful to people who don't want to or simply cannot spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to build or upgrade their rigs to a standard that the latest games will comfortably play at. Pick up a $200 laptop, connect to an allotted VM and play your games. You absolutely can't deny the convenience factor for people there, and it would be retarded to do so.
On the other hand - yeah, its potential to give rise to more draconian DRM solutions is also undeniable...

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16:37 Feb-09-2020

It doesn't support my region so i can't try it out also most of my favorite games are not there which is weird becaue these are huge titles not some indie games, I mean we are talking about 12 million player community

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16:12 Feb-09-2020

Most people on this site are probably not the target audience for geforce now but options are good.

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15:21 Feb-09-2020

Yes, but unfortunately I can't buy Founders version, because every time I choose PayPal payment option I get an error... :/

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15:09 Feb-09-2020

With a controller it's passable. It just isn't responsive enough for mouse and keyboard.

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15:02 Feb-09-2020

so far all I get is this
https://i.imgur.com/2wbyzNY.png

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15:58 Feb-09-2020

yup, got the same, I guess too many people are trying to play... which means it is a success... i guess

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17:22 Feb-09-2020

Do you guys have the free or founders edition? I wouldn't want to waste my money and it not to work lol

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18:26 Feb-09-2020

Only free here

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18:35 Feb-09-2020

free here,
I wouldn't waste money on cloud access on games I would have to pay for separately too

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19:43 Feb-09-2020

I think you can use it for free in the first 90 days.

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20:34 Feb-09-2020

Pretty sure you can play them if you have them on steam/battlenet.

2

Can They Run... |

| 60FPS, Low, 1080p
Ryzen 5 5500U 6-Core 2.1GHz GeForce GTX 1650 16GB
100% Yes [1 votes]
| 60FPS, Ultra, 1080p
Ryzen R5 1600 Radeon RX 580 Sapphire Nitro+ 8GB 16GB
0% No [2 votes]
| 60FPS, Ultra, 1440p
Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core 3.8GHz GeForce RTX 3090 Zotac Gaming Trinity 24GB 32GB
100% Yes [1 votes]
| 60FPS, High, 1080p
Ryzen 3 3100 4-Core 3.6GHz GeForce RTX 3050 16GB
| 30FPS, High, 1080p
Ryzen 5 2600 GeForce GTX 1660 Gigabyte OC 6GB 16GB
0% No [2 votes]
| 60FPS, Low, 1080p
Ryzen 5 5500U 6-Core 2.1GHz GeForce GTX 1650 16GB
| 60FPS, High, 1440p
Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core 3.8GHz Radeon RX 6900 XT 16GB 32GB
| 60FPS, Medium, 720p
Core i5-10300H 4-Core 2.50GHz GeForce GTX 1650 8GB
| 60FPS, High, 1080p
Core i9-9900K 8-Core 3.6GHz GeForce GTX 1060 Gigabyte Mini ITX OC 6GB 32GB
66.6667% Yes [3 votes]
| 60FPS, High, 1080p
Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core 3.6GHz Radeon RX 5700 PowerColor Red Dragon 8GB 16GB
| 60FPS, High, 1080p
Ryzen 3 3100 4-Core 3.6GHz GeForce RTX 3050 16GB
0% No [1 votes]
| 60FPS, Ultra, 4k
Core i9-9900K 8-Core 3.6GHz GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Asus ROG Strix OC 11GB 32GB
| 30FPS, Ultra, 1440p
Ryzen 5 2600X 6-Core 3.6GHz GeForce GTX 1080 16GB
100% Yes [1 votes]
| 60FPS, High, 1080p
Ryzen 3 3100 4-Core 3.6GHz GeForce RTX 3050 16GB
| 60FPS, High, 1080p
Ryzen 3 3100 4-Core 3.6GHz GeForce RTX 3050 16GB
100% Yes [1 votes]