GeForce Now review: You bring the games, Nvidia streams the hardware

Price When Reviewed

Free tier I Priority tier ($9.99/mo or $49.99/6 mo) I RTX 3080 tier ($19.99/mo or $99.99/6 mo)

Best Prices Today

GeForce Now is Nvidia’s cloud-based game-streaming service. For those that aren’t aware of this idea, it signifies that Nvidia gives the {hardware} firepower through its personal media servers. Instead of you putting in a sport to your PC and needing an costly GPU to get essentially the most out of it, you simply want a powerful, steady web connection and a subscription to Nvidia’s service, which may vary from free to $20 per thirty days. Note: The video games themselves aren’t offered at any subscription degree. More on that time once we speak about video games beneath.

The plans

GeForce Now at present gives three tiers: Free, Priority, and RTX 3080. 

Uniquely, GeForce Now is at present the one main cloud gaming service providing a Free entry plan. While many providers provide a brief free trial, the GeForce Now Free plan is full entry to the service with no long-term limitations. However, there are some short-term ones.

Each tier comes with a restrict to how lengthy you might be linked to a gaming session at a time. The Free tier is proscribed to at least one hour, Priority subscribers can play for as much as six hours per session, and RTX 3080 subscribers get eight hour periods. There isn’t any set restrict to the variety of periods you can begin in a day. The free tier additionally doesn’t function “RTX On,” Nvidia’s time period for ray-tracing and DLSS assist.

There’s a precedence part to the tiers, too, as Nvidia locations limitations on the general course of and person hundreds on GeForce Now’s regional knowledge facilities. Free members have the bottom precedence in connecting to the service, which may imply ready in line to connect with a rig at instances. Priority and RTX 3080 have precedence entry to the queue, with RTX 3080 members having access to programs that present RTX 3080 GPUs. There could also be instances when an RTX 3080 rig is just not obtainable for a member, which can ship that member to the Priority queue as a substitute.

Beyond these various limitations, GeForce Now advertises as much as 1080p at 60 frames-per-second gameplay for its Priority members, and as much as 1440p at 120fps for PC/Mac and 4K HDR on Shield TV for its RTX 3080 members.

In the United States, the place this assessment was finished, the membership plans price the next:

• Free
• Priority: $9.99/month or $49.99/6 months
• RTX 3080: $19.99/month or $99.99/months

Additionally, there are web bandwidth necessities and knowledge utilization situations to think about. GeForce Now requires a minimal of a 15Mbps connection for 720p at 60fps, 25Mbps connection for 1080p at 60fps, and a 35Mbps connection for 1440p at 120fps for the RTX 3080 plan. Additionally, GeForce Now does require a lower than 80ms latency from an Nvidia knowledge middle, however recommends a lower than 40ms latency.

Game library

At first look, the GeForce Now game library is spectacular—till you notice it’s a listing of video games which are playable on the platform, not a listing of video games which are offered to you thru the subscription as you discover on different cloud gaming providers.

You need to personal your personal digital copies of the video games you want to play on GeForce Now—and particularly need to personal them on the right platform for GeForce Now. This could be a bit messy in case you’re an present PC gamer with a reasonably large library on Steam or Epic Games Store, since you may personal a sport on one platform, however regardless of the sport being obtainable to play inside GeForce Now, you might need it on the improper platform to play inside.

We bumped into precisely this whereas testing with Control Ultimate Edition. Currently, solely the Steam model of Control Ultimate Edition is on the market to play in GeForce Now, so in case you personal it on the Epic Games Store, you’re out of luck. However, the unique Control launch is suitable with each Steam and Epic Game Store releases. None of that helped us although, as our copy of Control Ultimate Edition is on GOG, which largely isn’t supported by GeForce Now excluding Cyberpunk 2077 and some of the Witcher video games.

In addition to your owned sport library, you possibly can play many Free to Play video games corresponding to Fortnite, League of Legends, Destiny 2, Path of Exile, Rocket League, and extra by means of GeForce Now. You do nonetheless must arrange your personal account entry on their related platforms.

If you’re eager on the concept of proudly owning your personal sport library or wish to have some flexibility as to the place you possibly can sport, with out having to lug round a gaming rig, this service is price testing.

User expertise

Getting began with GeForce Now is pretty easy. You simply need to register your self with an account, or when you have an present Nvidia/GeForce account, you possibly can activate GeForce Now on it.

Once logged in and linked, you possibly can select to entry the video games by means of a Chrome, Safari, or Edge browser to check out some video games with out putting in something. However, in our expertise, it’s preferable to check out the native app as a substitute, because the expertise appears to work a bit extra easily in each the menu navigation and in-game in comparison with the browser expertise. Nvidia agrees, and tries to push you to put in its app as a substitute of utilizing the browser.

Nvidia

You can select to sync your Steam, Epic Games Store, and Ubisoft Connect accounts to your GeForce Now account, which can assist filter the sport library you see in GeForce Now to the titles you personal and the platforms you may have entry to them on. However, syncing your account right here appears to simply assist handle the library, as you’ll must log in to the related platform once more once you go to play a sport.

When you go to launch a sport, it might put you in a queue relying on how busy issues are to your entry degree. In our testing, the Free entry had a typical queue time of a few minutes, the longest being eight minutes, however time of day and placement will have an effect on your expertise. Once you’re by means of the road, you’ll launch right into a full-screen view of what’s successfully a really trimmed-down distant desktop surroundings. In there, you’ll be prompted by the sport’s platform, corresponding to Steam, asking you to log in to your account. Once logged in, your chosen sport ought to launch instantly.

All of the video games inside GeForce Now are put in and stored updated on the service’s finish, so that you received’t want to attend for any patching or updates your self. This appears to be normal to most cloud gaming providers on the market, nevertheless it’s good to not have to attend for the obtain and set up when beginning up a brand new sport.

As talked about earlier than, your play periods do have a time restrict, with the Free plan being solely an hour. The one-hour session size might be irritating when you must log in, queue up, and find yourself in an extended League of Legends match, because the session may finish earlier than the sport does. But it’s sufficient time to work on some Destiny or Warframe dailies, or to get some piecemeal progress in Far Cry 6 or Life is Strange. We did some testing to see if there have been any short-term limitations on what number of sport periods you possibly can pop out and in of, although, and didn’t appear to hit any type of blocker. Additionally, GeForce Now’s personal FAQ confirms that there’s no day by day limits to the variety of periods you possibly can play.

For some added flare, GeForce Now does assist the Nvidia Highlights system, which is a function with GeForce Experience and Nvidia GPUs that permits you to seize clutch moments, victory streaks, and different key experiences out of your gameplay for supported video games. When you launch a sport that helps this function in GeForce Now, it can let you recognize and how one can reap the benefits of it whereas enjoying.

Game efficiency

Honestly, we have been very impressed. With the proper web connection, enjoying some video games in GeForce Now wasn’t a lot totally different from enjoying them on a neighborhood PC. In our testing, the one notable distinction was the 1080p expertise being streamed to our higher-resolution show, however that was anticipated. 

For context, my testing connection has 400Mbps down, 25Mbps up, with a 24ms latency to Nvidia’s Central U.S. server. Latency is without doubt one of the main considerations concerning cloud gaming providers, understandably—significantly, in case you’re not bodily positioned close to one of many service’s server places. Since my testing situations have been inside GeForce Now’s really useful pointers my expertise was genuinely clean when it got here to the “feel” of enjoying the sport. I attempted a handful of video games, from motion to puzzle, corresponding to a high-speed quick clearing character in Path of Exile—an online-only motion RPG with very chaotic moments and a few very fast deaths, and the gameplay expertise was just about equivalent to loading up the sport domestically on my gaming rig. Every sport I examined had equally clean and responsive experiences. 

I additionally took benefit of some video games which have benchmarks inside them, together with Far Cry 5, Cyberpunk 2077, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The outcomes have been all just about as marketed, with the Free and Priority tiers being just about equal in efficiency. (Remember, nevertheless, your expertise could differ relying in your web connection and proximity to the servers.) Interestingly, I used to be in a position to modify a number of the show settings in some video games, so I did get a take a look at a Far Cry 5 High vs. Ultra benchmark, for instance. 

Nvidia

Nvidia

Some video games have been in a position to give me perception into the precise {hardware} working the GeForce Now programs. According to my checks, through Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the Free and Priority service appear to be working with Intel CC150 CPUs at 3.5GHz and the graphics are listed as Nvidia Tesla T10, which by my estimation could be the T10-8s, as these are the RTX sequence T10 playing cards for this sort server surroundings. The RTX 3080 programs appear to be working AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3955WX CPUs and Nvidia A10G GPU, leading to an total extra spectacular expertise, each in decision and efficiency.

Bottom line

Long story brief, enjoying a sport at any plan tier is a genuinely stable expertise so long as your web connection can deal with it. While having to convey your personal video games could also be a little bit of a bummer in comparison with different cloud gaming choices on the market, the general efficiency and high quality of GeForce Now is spectacular. At the very least, they’ve a Free plan, so give it a whirl in case you can—particularly in case you’ve had hassle dredging up a brand new graphics card during the last 12 months.