Nvidia: GeForce Now and 5G enables quality gaming on the go, even with low-end hardware

[midian182]

Forward-looking: We know that when it finally rolls out, super-fast 5G technology will bring a slew of benefits, and it seems the next generation of wireless communications will also help gamers on the go with potato PCs.

Back at CES 2017, Nvidia announced GeForce Now—a cloud-based streaming service that allows people to experience high-end gaming on low-end machines. Following the Mac beta launch last year, the PC beta arrived last January.

As The Register reports, Nvidia’s vice president of sales, Paul Bommarito, showed what the system was capable of when paired with 5G at the AT&T Spark conference in San Francisco. Using a standard, non-gaming laptop, he demonstrated how 60 fps at full HD with a lag of 16ms was possible. According to Nvidia, anything under 60ms is recommended for an “optimal experience.”

The demonstration took place without the use of a dedicated internet connection, though Nvidia admitted there was a 5G base station set up in the demo area. But the company insists that users will experience the same or similar performance when 5G becomes widely available.

Nvidia said it hopes to reduce this latency figure down to 3ms eventually. As it’s still in the free beta, there’s no word on how much GeForce Now might cost. Last year, Nvidia talked about a per-hour pricing scheme: $25 would get you 20 hours of game streaming with performance comparable to a GTX 1080-powered PC. But we don’t know if it’s sticking to that plan or moving to a Netflix-style set monthly fee. Hopefully, it will be the latter.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/76371-nvidia-shows-how-geforce-now-5g-can-match.html

 

[Thayios]

As a current beta tester, never going to happen on 5G. The service is good on gigabit (not 75 Mbps) but if you're not hardwired you'll end up with frame rate drops as it searches for other access points every so often. I just can't see the gameplay being any good on that without mass optimization as it sits currently.

 

[Sausagemeat]

$25 for 20 hours is very bad value. A lot of people would probably use that in a week. $100 a month? Might as well get a 2080ti as that would be better value. Even at half that usage, say 10 hours a week, buying a 2080ti is better value.

 

[treetops]

As a current beta tester, never going to happen on 5G. The service is good on gigabit (not 75 Mbps) but if you're not hardwired you'll end up with frame rate drops as it searches for other access points every so often. I just can't see the gameplay being any good on that without mass optimization as it sits currently.

It's your ping that matters not your download rate.... Unless your in a car you will not constantly change between access point. You could have gigblast but if your ping is at 200 your not gonna have a good experience. As the article listed with 5g you get around 16 ms which is very good.

INTERNET REQUIREMENTS
GeForce NOW requires at least 15 Mbps for 720p at 60fps and 25 Mbps for 1080p at 60fps.
You’ll need to use a hardwired Ethernet connection or 5GHz wireless router.

Having a higher dl rate will not lower your ping.

 

[Thayios]

As a current beta tester, never going to happen on 5G. The service is good on gigabit (not 75 Mbps) but if you're not hardwired you'll end up with frame rate drops as it searches for other access points every so often. I just can't see the gameplay being any good on that without mass optimization as it sits currently.

It's your ping that matters not your download rate.... Unless your in a car you will not constantly change between access point. You could have gigblast but if your ping is at 200 your not gonna have a good experience. As the article listed with 5g you get around 16 ms which is very good.

INTERNET REQUIREMENTS
GeForce NOW requires at least 15 Mbps for 720p at 60fps and 25 Mbps for 1080p at 60fps.
You’ll need to use a hardwired Ethernet connection or 5GHz wireless router.

Having a higher dl rate will not lower your ping.

There's also an internet speed requirement, the same things you listed. Ping time will improve (decrease) response time in the game but will not stop you from using it. You'll just get notices every so often of bad quality internet.

My father works for Sony Ericsson as a Cell Tower Engineer so I'm aware of how often you get bounced between towers seamlessly and it happens more often than you think.

 

[Sausagemeat]

There's also an internet speed requirement, the same things you listed. Ping time will improve (decrease) response time in the game but will not stop you from using it. You'll just get notices every so often of bad quality internet.

My father works for Sony Ericsson as a Cell Tower Engineer so I'm aware of how often you get bounced between towers seamlessly and it happens more often than you think.

Ping, or response time from the server will have a far bigger effect on the user experience of the game than bandwidth or “internet speed”. 25Mbps bandwidth is what you need to stream 4K video, I can’t see why a game streaming platform would need more than that. Chances are if you have less bandwidth than 25Mbps you will still be able to play but with a compressed video feed. So long as your latency (ping) is good enough.

 

[Thayios]

Ping, or response time from the server will have a far bigger effect on the user experience of the game than bandwidth or “internet speed”. 25Mbps bandwidth is what you need to stream 4K video, I can’t see why a game streaming platform would need more than that. Chances are if you have less bandwidth than 25Mbps you will still be able to play but with a compressed video feed. So long as your latency (ping) is good enough.

I'm aware of the differences between ping and internet speed as I'm a Systems Architect for the Government so no need to keep explaining the difference between ping and internet speed (not trying to be rude, just letting you know, I'm not some average internet troll that doesn't understand what I helped build over the years - the internet). I don't know what 4K movies you watch, but mine are around 70-100 Mbps (Lucy for example, is 91.5 Mbps) unless you're talking about something like Netflix or Amazon which gradually increases the resolution as it fills the buffer (e.g. doesn't start off at 4K resolution, starts off at 720P usually and goes up as the data is downloaded).

You've said exactly what I've been saying sans the playable portion. I'm not sure if you're a beta tester or not for this, but as one, I can guarantee you that as it sits now (our release version at least), there's absolutely zero enjoyable way to play right now with a lackluster connection let alone a cell phone tower signal. If your idea of playable is having everything speed up really fast to match and then slow back down, we'll just have a difference of opinion. If they manage to pull a rabbit out of their hat with a production version we haven't seen, I would be floored.

Currently, with a 1 Gbps connection and a sub 10 MS ping time 99% of the time (zero packet loss), I still have frame dropouts, speed up/slow downs in the games every so often. I couldn't imagine that on a cellphone interface unless you were playing a turned based strategy game that didn't have a lot going on at once.