Title: Cloud gaming review using Geforce Now | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 07 March 2024 | |
Tags: gaming network unix | |
Description: In this article, I'm sharing my experience playing video | |
games with the cloud gaming service Geforce Now | |
# Introduction | |
I'm finally done with ADSL now as I got access to optical fiber last | |
week! It was time for me to try cloud gaming again and see how it | |
improved since my last use in 2016. | |
If you are not familiar with cloud gaming, please do not run away, here | |
is a brief description. Cloud gaming refers to a service allowing one | |
to play locally a game running on a remote machine (either locally or | |
over the Internet). | |
There are a few commercial services available, mainly: GeForce Now, | |
PlayStation Plus Premium (other tiers don't have streaming), Xbox game | |
pass Ultimate and Amazon Luna. Two major services died in the long | |
run: Google Stadia and Shadow (which is back now with a different | |
formula). | |
A note on Shadow, they are now offering access to an entire computer | |
running Windows, and you do what you want with it, which is a bit | |
different from other "gaming" services listed above. It's expensive, | |
but not more than renting an AWS system with equivalent specs (I know | |
some people doing that for gaming). | |
This article is about the service Nvidia GeForce Now (not sponsored, | |
just to be clear). | |
I tried the free tier, premium tier and ultimate tier (thanks to people | |
supporting me on Patreon, I could afford the price for this review). | |
Geforce Now official page | |
Geforce Now page where you play (not easy to figure after a login) | |
# The service | |
This is the first service I tried in 2016 when I received an Nvidia | |
Shield HTPC, the experience was quite solid back in the days. But is | |
it good in 2024? | |
The answer is clear, yes, it's good, but it has limitations you need to | |
be aware of. The free tier allows playing for a maximum of 1 hour in a | |
single session, and with a waiting queue that can be fast (< 1 minute) | |
or long (> 15 minutes), but the average waiting time I had was like 9 | |
minutes. The waiting queue also displays ads now. | |
The premium tier at 11€$/month removes the queue system by giving you | |
priority over free users, always assigns an RTX card and allows playing | |
up to 6 hours in a single session (you just need to start a new session | |
if you want to continue). | |
Finally, the ultimate tier costs 22€$/month and allows you to play in | |
4K@120fps on a RTX 4080, up to 8h. | |
The tiers are quite good in my opinion, you can try and use the service | |
for free to check if it works for you, then the premium tier is | |
affordable to be used regularly. The ultimate tier will only be useful | |
to advanced gamers who need 4K, or higher frame rates. | |
Nvidia just released a new offer early March 2024, a premium daily pass | |
for $3.99 or ultimate daily pass for 8€. This is useful if you want | |
to evaluate a tier before deciding if you pay for 6 months. You will | |
understand later why this daily pass can be useful compared to buying a | |
full month. | |
# Operating system support | |
I tried the service using a Steam Deck, a Linux computer over Wi-Fi and | |
Ethernet, a Windows computer over Ethernet and in a VM on Qubes OS. | |
The latency and quality were very different. | |
If you play in a web browser (Chrome based, Edge, Safari), make sure it | |
supports hardware acceleration video decoding, this is the default for | |
Windows but a huge struggle on Linux, Chrome/Chromium support is recent | |
and can be enabled using `chromium | |
--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecodeLinuxGL --use-gl=angle`. There is a | |
Linux Electron App, but it does nothing more than bundling the web page | |
in chromium, without acceleration. | |
On a web browser, the codec used is limited to h264 which does not work | |
great with dark areas, it is less effective than advanced codecs like | |
av1 or hevc (commonly known as h265). If you web browser can't handle | |
the stream, it will lose packets and then Geforce service will | |
instantly reduce the quality until you do not lose packets, which will | |
make things very ugly until it recover, until it drops again. Using | |
hardware acceleration solves the problem almost entirely! | |
Web browser clients are also limited to 60 fps (so ultimate tier is | |
useless), and Windows web browsers can support 1440p but no more. | |
On Windows and Android you can install a native Geforce Now | |
application, and it has a LOT more features than in-browser. You can | |
enable Nvidia reflex to remove any input lag, HDR for compatible | |
screens, 4K resolution, 120 fps frame rate etc... There is also a | |
feature to add color filters for whatever reason... The native program | |
used AV1 (I only tried with the ultimate tier), games were smooth with | |
stellar quality and not using more bandwidth than in h264 at 60 fps. | |
I took a screenshot while playing Baldur's Gate 3 on different systems, | |
you can compare the quality: | |
Playing on Steam native program, game set to maximum quality | |
Playing on Geforce Now on Windows native app, game set to maximum quality | |
Playing on Geforce Now on Linux with hardware acceleration, game set to maximum… | |
In my opinion, the best looking one is surprisingly the Geforce Now on | |
Windows, then the native run on Steam and finally on Linux where it's | |
still acceptable. You can see a huge difference in terms of quality in | |
the icons in the bottom bar. | |
# Tier system | |
When I upgraded from free to premium tier, I paid for 1 month and was | |
instantly able to use the service as a premium user. | |
Premium gives you priority in the queues, I saw the queue display a few | |
times for a few seconds, so there is virtually no queue, and you can | |
play for 6 hours in a row. | |
When I upgraded from premium to ultimate tier, I was expecting to pay | |
the price difference between my current subscription and the new one, | |
but it was totally different. I had to pay for a whole month of | |
ultimate tier, and my current remaining tier was converted as an | |
ultimate tier, but as ultimate costs a bit more than twice premium, a | |
pro rata was applied to the premium time, resulting in something like | |
12 extra days of ultimate for the premium month. | |
Ultimate tier allows reaching a 4K resolution and 120 fps refresh rate, | |
allow saving video settings in games, so you don't have to tweak them | |
every time you play, and provide an Nvidia 4080 for every session, so | |
you can always set the graphics settings to maximum. You can also play | |
up to 8 hours in a row. Additionaly, you can record gaming sessions or | |
the past n minutes, there is a dedicated panel using Ctrl+G. It's | |
possible to achieve 240 fps for compatible monitors, but only for 1080p | |
resolution. | |
Due to the tier upgrade method, the ultimate pass can be interesting, | |
if you had 6 months of premium, you certainly don't want to convert it | |
into 2 months of ultimate + paying 1 month of ultimate just to try. | |
# Gaming quality | |
As a gamer, I'm highly sensitive to latency, and local streaming has | |
always felt poor with regard to latency, and I've been very surprised | |
to see I can play an FPS game with a mouse on cloud gaming. I had a | |
ping of 8-75 ms with the streaming servers, which was really OK. Games | |
featuring "Nvidia reflex" have no sensitive input lag, this is almost | |
magic. | |
When using a proper client (native Windows client or a web browser with | |
hardware acceleration), the quality was good, input lag barely | |
noticeable (none in the app), it made me very happy :-) | |
Using the free tier, I always had a rig good enough to put the graphics | |
quality on High or Ultra, which surprised me for a free service. On | |
premium and later, I had an Nvidia 2080 minimum which is still relevant | |
nowadays. | |
The service can handle multiple controllers! You can use any kind of | |
controller, and even mix Xbox / PlayStation / Nintendo controllers, no | |
specific hardware required here. This is pretty cool as I can visit my | |
siblings, bring controllers and play together on their computer <3. | |
Another interesting benefit is that you can switch your gaming session | |
from a device to another by connecting with the other device while | |
already playing, Geforce Now will switch to the new connecting device | |
without interruption. | |
# Games library | |
This is where GeForce now is pretty cool, you don't need to buy games | |
to them. You can import your own libraries like Steam, Ubisoft, Epic | |
store, GOG (only CD Projekt Red games) or Xbox Game Pass games. Not | |
all games from your libraries will be playable though! And for some | |
reasons, some games are only available when run from Windows (native | |
app or web browser), like Genshin Impact which won't appear in the | |
games list if connected from non-Windows client?! | |
If you already own games (don't forget to claim weekly free Epic store | |
games), you can play most of them on GeForce Now, and thanks to cloud | |
saves, you can sync progression between sessions or with a local | |
computer. | |
There are a bunch of free-to-play games that are good (like Warframe, | |
Genshin Impact, some MMOs), so you could enjoy playing video games | |
without having to buy one (until you get bored?). | |
# Cost efficiency | |
If you don't currently own a modern gaming computer, and you subscribe | |
to the premium tier (9.17 $€/month when signing for 6 months), this | |
costs you 110 $€ / year. | |
Given an equivalent GPU costs at least 400€$ and could cope with | |
games in High quality for 3 years (I'm optimistic), the GPU alone costs | |
more than subscribing to the service. Of course, a local GPU can be | |
used for data processing nowadays, or could be sold second hand, or be | |
used for many years on old games. | |
If you add the whole computer around the GPU, renewed every 5 or 6 | |
years (we are targeting to play modern games in high quality here!), | |
you can add 1200 $€ / 5 years (or 240 $€ / year). | |
When using the ultimate tier, you instantly get access to the best GPU | |
available (currently a Geforce 4080, retail value of 1300€$). Cost | |
wise, this is impossible to beat with owned hardware. | |
I did some math to figure how much money you can save from electricity | |
saving: the average gaming rig draws approximately 350 Watts when | |
playing, a Geforce now thin client and a monitor would use 100 Watts in | |
the worst case scenario (a laptop alone would be more around 35 Watts). | |
So, you save 0.25 kWh per hour of gaming, if one plays 100 hours per | |
month (that's 20 days playing 5h, or 3.33 hours / day) they would save | |
25 kWh. The official rate in France is 0.25 € / kWh, that would | |
result in a 6.25€ saving in electricity. The monthly subscription is | |
immediately less expensive when taking this into account. Obviously, | |
if you are playing less, the savings are less important. | |
# Bandwidth usage and ecology | |
Most of the time, the streaming was using between 3 and 4 MB/s for a | |
1080p@60fps (full-hd resolution, 1920x1080, at 60 frames per second) in | |
automatic quality mode. Playing at 30 fps or on smaller resolutions | |
will use drastically less bandwidth. I've been able to play in | |
1080p@30 on my old ADSL line! (quality was degraded, but good enough). | |
Playing at 120 fps slightly increased the bandwidth usage by 1 MB/s. | |
I remember a long tech article about ecology and cloud gaming which | |
concluded cloud gaming is more "eco-friendly" than running locally if | |
you play it less than a dozen hours. However, it always assumed you | |
had a capable gaming computer locally that was already there, whether | |
you use the cloud gaming or not, which is a huge bias in my opinion. | |
It also didn't account that one may install a video games multiple | |
times and that a single game now weights 100 GB (which is equivalent to | |
20h of cloud gaming bandwidth wise!). The biggest cons was the | |
bandwidth requirements and the whole worldwide maintenance to keep high | |
speed lines for everyone. I do think Cloud gaming is way more | |
effective as it allows pooling gaming devices instead of having | |
everyone with their own hardware. | |
As a comparison, 4K streaming at Netflix uses 25 Mbps of network (~ 3.1 | |
MB/s). | |
# Playing on Android | |
Geforce Now allows you to play any compatible game on Android, is it | |
worth? I tried it with a Bluetooth controller on my BQ Aquaris X | |
running LineageOS (it's a 7 years old phone, average specs with a 720p | |
screen). | |
I was able to play in Wi-Fi using the 5 GHz network, it felt perfect | |
except that I had to put the smartphone screen in a comfortable way. | |
This was drawing the battery at a rate of 0.7% / minute, but this is an | |
old phone, I expect newer hardware to do better. | |
On 4G, the battery usage was less than Wi-Fi with 0.5% / minute. The | |
service at 720p@60fps used an average of 1.2 MB/s of data for a gaming | |
session of Monster Hunter world. At this rate, you can expect a data | |
usage of 4.3 GB / hour of gameplay, which could be a lot or cheap | |
depending on your usage and mobile subscription. | |
Globally, playing on Android was very good, but only if you have a | |
controller. There are interesting folding controllers that sandwich | |
the smartphone between two parts, turning it into something looking | |
like a Nintendo Switch, this can be a very interesting device for | |
players. | |
# Tips | |
You can use "Ctrl+G" to change settings while in game or also display | |
information about the streaming. | |
In GeForce Now settings (not in-game), you can choose the servers | |
location if you want to try a different datacenter. I set to choose | |
the nearest otherwise I could land on a remote one with a bad ping. | |
GeForce Now even works on OpenBSD or Qubes OS qubes (more on that later | |
on Qubes OS forum!). | |
Qubes OS forum discussion | |
# Conclusion | |
GeForce Now is a pretty neat service, the free tier is good enough for | |
occasional gamers who would play once in a while for a short session, | |
but also provide a cheaper alternative than having to keep a gaming rig | |
up-to-date. I really like that they allow me to use my own library | |
instead of having to buy games on their own store. | |
I'm preparing another blog post about local and self hosted cloud | |
gaming, and I have to admit I haven't been able to do better than | |
Geforce Now even on local network... Engineers at Geforce Now | |
certainly know their stuff! | |
The experience was solid even on a 10 years old laptop, and enjoyable. | |
A "cool" feature when playing is the surrounding silence, as no CPU/GPU | |
are crunching for rendering! My GPU is still capable to handle modern | |
games at an average quality at 60 FPS, I may consider using the premium | |
tier in the future instead of replacing my GPU. |