Nvidia’s Geforce Now Is Upgrading To Rtx 5080 Gpus And Opening A Floodgate Of New Games

It’s been 2 and a half years since Nvidia’s GeForce Now unreality gaming service sewage a large boost successful graphics, latency, and refresh rates — this September, Nvidia’s GFN will officially adhd its latest Blackwell GPUs. You’ll soon beryllium capable to rent what’s efficaciously an RTX 5080 successful nan cloud, 1 pinch a whopping 48GB of representation and DLSS 4, past usage that powerfulness to watercourse your ain near-maxed-out PC games to your phone, Mac, PC, TV, set-top, aliases Chromebook for $20 a month.

The news comes pinch immoderate caveats, but a bunch of different upgrades, too, nan biggest of which is called “Install-to-Play.” Nvidia is yet bringing backmost nan expertise to instal games without waiting for Nvidia to formally curate them. Nvidia claims that will double nan GeForce Now room successful 1 fell swoop.

No, you can’t conscionable instal immoderate aged PC crippled you ain — but each crippled that’s opted into Valve’s Steam Cloud Play will instantly beryllium disposable to install. “Literally nan infinitesimal we adhd nan feature, you’ll spot 2,352 games show up,” Nvidia merchandise trading head Andrew Fear tells The Verge. After that, he says Install-to-Play will fto Nvidia adhd galore much games and demos to GFN connected their merchandise dates, conscionable truthful agelong arsenic publishers tick that box.

Currently, Steam is nan only level compatible pinch Install-to-Play, but Fear tells maine galore publishers thin to opt successful done Valve’s distribution network, including Ubisoft, Paradox, Nacom, Devolver, TinyBuild and CD Projekt Red.

One important caveat is that Install-to-Play games won’t motorboat instantly for illustration curated titles; you’ll request to download and instal them each time, unless you salary Nvidia other for persistent retention astatine $3 for $200GB, $5 for 500GB, aliases $8 for 1TB per month. Installs should beryllium fast, though, since Nvidia’s servers are linked to Valve’s Steam servers astatine up to 1Gbps. When GFN primitively launched pinch a akin feature, I retrieve downloading games acold faster than I’ve ever done astatine home.

And Nvidia has a caller usage for your location bandwidth, too. If you’ve sewage enough, GFN will besides now fto you watercourse astatine 5K solution (for some 16:9 monitors and ultrawides) astatine 120fps, aliases astatine up to 360fps astatine 1080p.

There’s besides a caller optional Cinematic Quality Streaming mode you tin toggle that Nvidia claims tin trim colour bleed and reconstruct item to acheronian and blurry areas of a segment arsenic it’s streamed complete nan net, and you tin now watercourse astatine up to 100Mbps, up from 75Mbps previously, to thief support that quality. (It uses HDR10 and SDR10, pinch YUV 4:4:4 chroma sampling, streamed complete AV1 pinch an added AI video select and immoderate optimizations for clearer matter and HUD elements.)

Plus, Steam Deck OLED owners will beryllium capable to watercourse astatine its autochthonal 90Hz refresh complaint (up from 60Hz), LG is bringing a autochthonal GeForce Now app straight to its 4K OLED TVs and 5K OLED monitors — “no Android TV devices, nary Chromecast, nothing, tally it straight connected nan television,” says Fear — and Logitech racing wheels pinch haptic feedback are now supported too.

How overmuch much capacity will you genuinely get from an RTX 5080 successful nan cloud? That’s nan existent question, and we don’t person a clear reply yet. For 1 thing, Nvidia isn’t promising you’ll always person an RTX 5080-tier GPU for each crippled you play. The company’s $20-a-month GFN Ultimate tier will still see RTX 4080-class cards too, astatine slightest for nan clip being.

Fear says there’s nary ulterior motive location — it’ll conscionable return clip for 5080 capacity to rotation retired “as we adhd nan servers and bring up capacity.” He besides rattles disconnected a laundry database of celebrated games that’ll person 5080 capacity correct away, including Apex Legends, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Baldur’s Gate 3, Black Myth Wukong, Clair Obscur, Cyberpunk 2077, Doom: The Dark Ages… you get nan idea.

The different caveat is that while Nvidia claims its caller Blackwell Superpods are up to 2.8 times faster astatine gaming, that’s only if you person DLSS 4 generating 3 clone frames for each existent framework (4x MFG) and being OK pinch immoderate resulting lag. We weren’t blown distant pinch nan uplift from RTX 4080 to RTX 5080 successful our review of nan beingness card, and latency is moreover much important erstwhile you’re streaming complete nan net.

That said, Tom and I person been impressed pinch GFN’s latency successful nan past. I’ve parried Expedition 33 foes and Sekiro bosses pinch it — and successful lightweight games, Nvidia’s latency whitethorn person gotten moreover amended this gen acknowledgment to partnerships pinch ISPs for illustration Comcast, T-Mobile and BT for low-latency L4S tech and nan caller 360fps mode. The institution claims nan 360fps mode tin present end-to-end latency of conscionable 30ms successful Overwatch 2, a crippled wherever you don’t request multi-frame procreation (MFG) to get that galore frames.

That’s much responsive than a location console — assuming you’re adjacent capable and peered good capable to Nvidia’s servers to get 10ms ping, for illustration I do successful nan San Francisco Bay Area.

The bully news is, you won’t person to salary an other cent for nan RTX 5080 capacity boost either way. GeForce Now Ultimate will stay $19.99 a period for now. “We’re not going to summation our value astatine all,” says Fear, successful a group briefing. When I inquire him privately whether Nvidia will summation it later, he can’t say, but claims GFN has only ever accrued value erstwhile Nvidia saw a large summation successful powerfulness usage aliases needed to rebalance rate speech successful immoderate regions. “Nothing’s written successful stone, but we’re saying for now nary plans to make a value increase.”

Additionally, Nvidia is trying an intriguing caller research that bakes GeForce Now into Discord truthful gamers tin instantly effort caller games for free correct from a Discord server, nary GeForce Now login required. Epic Games and Discord are first partner demoing nan exertion astatine Gamescom this week.

“You tin simply click a fastener that says ‘try a game’ and past link your Epic Games relationship and instantly jump successful and and subordinate nan action, and you’ll beryllium playing Fortnite successful seconds without immoderate downloads aliases installs,” says Fear. He tells The Verge that it’s simply a “technology announcement” arsenic of today, but that Nvidia hopes crippled publishers and developers will scope retired if they’re willing successful perchance adding it to their games.

I dream so, arsenic I’ve been successful awe of try-before-you-buy unreality gaming ever since Gaikai introduced nan idea 15 years ago, but Gaikai’s laminitis told maine years later that publishers didn’t needfully want it.

I’m looking guardant to trying GeForce Now’s 5080-class servers erstwhile they motorboat successful September, alongside nan caller 90Hz mode for Steam Deck OLED, and I’m funny whether nan influx of games will yet make it consciousness for illustration a existent console replacement for me. One of my past large remaining reservations is how galore of my Steam games are still missing.

Speaking of which, don’t expect to spot Sony aliases Rockstar games for illustration Grand Theft Auto connected nan work anytime soon. “I person nary updates, they person chosen not to beryllium connected GFN, and you should spell inquire them,” Fear tells me.