Nvidia’s GeForce Now is upgrading to RTX 5080 GPUs and opening a floodgate of new games

It’s been 2 and a fractional years since Nvidia’s GeForce Now unreality gaming service got a large boost successful graphics, latency, and refresh rates — this September, Nvidia’s GFN volition officially adhd its latest Blackwell GPUs. You’ll soon beryllium capable to rent what’s efficaciously an RTX 5080 successful the cloud, 1 with 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, oregon Chromebook for $20 a month.

The quality comes with immoderate caveats, but a clump of different upgrades, too, the biggest of which is called “Install-to-Play.” Nvidia is yet bringing backmost the quality to instal games without waiting for Nvidia to formally curate them. Nvidia claims that volition treble the 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 volition instantly beryllium disposable to install. “Literally the infinitesimal we adhd the feature, you’ll spot 2,352 games amusement up,” Nvidia merchandise selling manager Andrew Fear tells The Verge. After that, helium says Install-to-Play volition 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 the lone level compatible with Install-to-Play, but Fear tells maine galore publishers thin to opt successful done Valve’s organisation network, including Ubisoft, Paradox, Nacom, Devolver, TinyBuild and CD Projekt Red.

One important caveat is that Install-to-Play games won’t motorboat instantly similar curated titles; you’ll request to download and instal them each time, unless you wage Nvidia other for persistent retention astatine $3 for $200GB, $5 for 500GB, oregon $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 with 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 got enough, GFN volition besides present fto you watercourse astatine 5K solution (for some 16:9 monitors and ultrawides) astatine 120fps, oregon 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 country arsenic it’s streamed implicit the net, and you tin present watercourse astatine up to 100Mbps, up from 75Mbps previously, to assistance support that quality. (It uses HDR10 and SDR10, with YUV 4:4:4 chroma sampling, streamed implicit AV1 with an added AI video filter and immoderate optimizations for clearer substance and HUD elements.)

Plus, Steam Deck OLED owners volition 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 the television,” says Fear — and Logitech racing wheels with haptic feedback are present supported too.

How overmuch much show volition you genuinely get from an RTX 5080 successful the cloud? That’s the existent question, and we don’t person a wide 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 volition inactive see RTX 4080-class cards too, astatine slightest for the clip being.

Fear says there’s nary ulterior motive determination — it’ll conscionable instrumentality clip for 5080 show to rotation retired “as we adhd the servers and bring up capacity.” He besides rattles disconnected a laundry database of fashionable games that’ll person 5080 show close 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 the idea.

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

That said, Tom and I person been impressed with GFN’s latency successful the past. I’ve parried Expedition 33 foes and Sekiro bosses with it — and successful lightweight games, Nvidia’s latency whitethorn person gotten adjacent amended this gen acknowledgment to partnerships with ISPs similar Comcast, T-Mobile and BT for low-latency L4S tech and the caller 360fps mode. The institution claims the 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, similar I bash successful the San Francisco Bay Area.

The bully quality is, you won’t person to wage an other cent for the RTX 5080 show boost either way. GeForce Now Ultimate volition stay $19.99 a period for now. “We’re not going to summation our terms astatine all,” says Fear, successful a radical briefing. When I inquire him privately whether Nvidia volition summation it later, helium can’t say, but claims GFN has lone ever accrued terms erstwhile Nvidia saw a large summation successful powerfulness usage oregon needed to rebalance currency speech successful immoderate regions. “Nothing’s written successful stone, but we’re saying for present nary plans to marque a terms increase.”

Additionally, Nvidia is trying an intriguing caller experimentation that bakes GeForce Now into Discord truthful gamers tin instantly effort caller games for escaped close from a Discord server, nary GeForce Now login required. Epic Games and Discord are archetypal spouse demoing the 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 leap successful and and articulation the action, and you’ll beryllium playing Fortnite successful seconds without immoderate downloads oregon 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 volition scope retired if they’re funny successful perchance adding it to their games.

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

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

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