GeForce NOW RTX 3080 proven: here’s how NVIDIA’s cloud gaming improves

GeForce NOW RTX 3080 the new subscription plan just launched by NVIDIA for his renowned service of cloud gaming. RTX 3080 complements the existing ones Free e Priority and allows you to play up to resolution 1440p and up to 120 frames per second with the titles that allow it. Obviously, this is not possible with all games (Far Cry 6 and Cyberpunk 2077, for example, will remain at 60 fps), while Apex Legends, CS:GO e Destiny 2 they will go to 120 fps, with advantages above all for the latencies.

The GeForce NOW update allows users to enjoy a gaming experience comparable to a high-end PC with GeForce RTX 3080, even if the gaming station does not have the hardware that allows it. In fact, each user remotely has access to it 35 TFLOPs of graphics power, an 8-core, 16-thread CPU, 28 GB of DDR4-3200 memory and a PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Among other things, GeForce NOW allows you to enable effects in ray tracing on supported games such as Cyberpunk 2077, Watch Dogs: Legion e The Division 2. Automatically these games are started with the best graphics options and, therefore, with ray tracing enabled by default.

In terms of internet connection performance, if NVIDIA requires at least 25 Mbps to play in 1080p at 60 fps, the RTX 3080 plan requires a connection from 35 Mbps tramite Ethernet o Wi-Fi su banda 5 GHz. Additionally, the GeForce NOW plan also introduces the option Adaptive Sync, what NVIDIA defines as a kind of extension of what it has learned working on G-Sync and Reflex technologies applied to the cloud. In practice, the frames rendered by the game engine are synchronized with the encoding process at 60 or 120 frames and subsequently with the refresh rate of the monitor equipped with the client on which you play. This is possible because NVIDIA was able to eliminate server-side CPU and GPU buffering and compensate for network jitter – noise – by eliminating some client-side buffering.

In order to test the improvements in terms of latency brought in dowry by the new RTX 3080 profile we used the sensor LDAT, together with the monitor ASUS ROG Swift PG259QNR a 360 Hz. We positioned the sensor near the area of ​​the screen where the blaze following the explosion of a shot from a weapon would have occurred: the instrument, which connected to a mouse, by measuring the luminance of the screen, calculated the time that elapses between mouse click and luminance change.

We started from Destiny 2, with these latency results.

We used a PC equipped with a Z590 motherboard with Core i9-10900K and 16 GB of DDR4-4000 memory, capable of rendering Destiny 2 in 1080p at around 300 frames per second. An exceptional performance that contributes to greatly reduce the latency of the “PC” voice, which therefore implies local processing. GeForce NOW with the new setting at 120 fps, however, does an excellent job, improving latencies compared to the other modes available in GeForce NOW and compared to Google Stadia, which also runs this game at 60 frames per second.

Destiny 2, on the other hand, allows on GeForce NOW, thanks to the new RTX 3080 profile, to disable V-Sync, allowing you to play at 120 frames per second, with consequent reduction in latency. In order to enable the best performance you need to configure the GeForce NOW settings as shown in the previous image.

We remind you that running in cloud gaming does not involve a constant output resolution for the user, since the image quality varies from moment to moment depending on the performance of the internet connection. In the case of Stadia, for example, to always get a resolution at 1080p you need to enable the Stadia Pro subscription and set the 4K resolution. Here is the qualitative comparison.

As always when we make this type of comparison, we take as a reference a writing far from the observation point. In local processing (1080p) very sharp, while in GeForce NOW it loses very little. Stadia, on the other hand, degrades the definition of the image in a much more evident way.

A game available on GeForce NOW and instead absent in the Stadia catalog Fortnite. Here’s how the latency tests went with the Epic title.

Also in this case, local processing leads to almost 300 frames per second in 1080p, with a consequent excellent latency result. Unfortunately, not even the new GeForce NOW RTX 3080 profile manages to play Fortnite at 120 fps in cloud gaming.

The main difference between GeForce NOW and Stadia is that NVIDIA’s service basically runs PC versions of games, while Google’s uses console counterparts, albeit slightly enhanced and more stable at the frame rate level. for this reason it does not go beyond 30 frames per second in Far Cry 6 and you cannot adjust the graphics settings. On GeForce NOW, however, Far Cry 6 even allows you to run the benchmark.

We notice how the latency rises considerably with local processing: this is because Far Cry 6 is a more recent game than Destiny 2 and Fortnite with its graphics engine that moves many more polygonal objects on the screen. In cloud gaming, however, there is not an increase in latency that is so important compared to the Bungie title, because obviously the processing is not done from the local machine but remotely. GeForce NOW allows you to play Far Cry 6 at 60 fps, and this results in significantly lower latencies than the Stadia version. We also performed a quick benchmark comparing the PC version with the GeForce NOW version: leave the time it finds for obvious reasons, but we are also publishing the result more than anything else to underline how this test mode is available within the GFN version of Far Cry 6.

At the same time, it should be noted that a multiplayer title, or a driving game, by its nature requires the lowest possible latencies. For this reason, cloud gaming fits best with more relaxed single player experiences. In this regard, let’s see how GeForce NOW behaves with Cyberpunk 2077. We compared it once again to Stadia, which still manages to run the CD Projekt RED title at 60 fps, like GFN.

In this case, the result recorded by Stadia is better than in previous tests, even if the qualitative comparison confirms that Google’s cloud gaming service is less efficient in terms of definition and is more subject to the appearance of artifacts typical of video compression.

Beyond these tests, however, cloud gaming (yet) does not guarantee n latencies comparable to those you have with a good gaming PC and with local processing n the same quality of the graphics. In fact, depending on the performance of the connection, visual artifacts remain, very often similar to those of a traditional video to which one has access in streaming.

However, consider that a cloud gaming service like GeForce NOW allows you to play immediately, without waiting for the download of the games and without taking up space on the storage units. If you consider that a title like Destiny 2 requires a download of more than 72 GB, it becomes clear how this becomes a considerable added value. Among the many strengths of GeForce NOW is the ability to access through the service the profiles of the main game distribution apps (Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, Ubisoft Connect and Origin), so you can share libraries, saves, progress, and other game-related content.

One of the best features of GeForce NOW that leaves the player with the true ownership of the games they buy. Unlike some competing services, games are purchased through distribution services and remain the property of the player, even if they decide to cancel their GeForce NOW subscription. Any progress made while playing games on GeForce NOW carries over into PC game versions for all titles that support cloud saves (almost all of the ones we’ve tried, except Cyberpunk 2077).

In addition, GeForce NOW PCs are constantly updated with the latest drivers and game patches so that the player does not have to worry about maintenance at any stage: launch the games and, right away, start playing. L’app di GeForce NOW easy to use to search the catalog for the games that interest you. GeForce NOW, however, not only accessible from PC with Windows, but also from Mac, Shield TV, Chromebook e smartphone Android.

The expense necessary to enable the GeForce NOW RTX 3080 profile of 99.99 euros for six months and, in addition to the RTX 3080 experience, allows gaming sessions lasting 8 hours. Priority, on the other hand, costs 49.99 euros for six months, with game sessions limited to 6 hours and images up to 1080p and 60 frames per second. The Free plan, on the other hand, allows you to play for a maximum of one hour.

This is an expense of about 16 Euros per month, justified for those who love to play with high frame rates and for those interested above all in those games for which, as we said in the course of the article, the new profile works well. The experience of cloud gaming in continuous improvement, and certainly gratifying for those who have high-performance connections and above all at 1 Gbp / s, with lower and lower latencies and quality of graphics, beyond some appreciable artifact. With the global shortage of video cards and the skyrocketing prices of those arriving in stores, GeForce NOW can be an excellent transitional solution, also because it allows you to enable ray tracing even in the absence of local hardware capable of processing it.

For more information, please refer to GeForce NOW site.