Nvidia is making some big boasting for their cloud gaming service GeForce Now.
They made this claim in a recent press release:
The latest GPU architecture offers up to 2.8x faster frame rates compared with previous-generation servers and outpaces the PlayStation 5 Pro by more than 3x.
Enhanced by the latest AMD “Zen 5” CPUs and NVIDIA ConnectX®-7 SmartNICs, GeForce NOW features the most advanced hardware in cloud gaming.
What Did Nvidia Upgrade?
Nvidia just announced that GeForce Now just received a huge upgrade. The cloud gaming service was just upgraded to their latest Blackwell architecture.
Blackwell was just announced and released last year. It replaces both Lovelace and Hopper, to be used for both consumers and datacenters.
GeForce Now has also been upgraded to GeForce RTX 5080. Of course, this isn’t one RTX 5080 GPU running on a single computer. Nvidia built a dedicated cloud gaming datacenter it’s calling the GeForce RTX 5080 SuperPod Network.
Cloud Gaming A High-End PC
Because of these upgrades, GeForce Now is streaming video games at the level of a high-end PC. There should be no dispute on their ability to make these upgrades.
At the high end, you can cloud game at 5K 120 FPS, if you have the setup for it. You’ll need a display and computing device that can stream at that level. You’ll also need a service provider that can provide internet with high quality speeds.
GeForce Now’s Strengths Are At The Low End
GeForce Now’s massive upgrade also brings improvements for most gamers. At 1440p, games can run at 240 FPS, and at 1080p, 360 FPS. Those are numbers that are now more affordable to reach with a cloud gaming subscription.
But Nvidia’s biggest boast comes to latency. They claim they were able to bring Overwatch 2 at 360Hz down to 30 ms total latency. That’s faster than the PlayStation 5 Pro. Sony’s console can run Overwatch 2 at 120Hz at 49 ms total latency at best.
Is GeForce Now An Actual Console Killer Now?
Cloud gaming has been a huge boon for gamers who can take advantage of it. Nvidia has also been clearly more successful than Google at it. Nvidia understood gaming better than Google because it has always been a huge part of their business.
But Nvidia still faces a lot of limitations. AOL is only now planning to end their dial-up services.
Most gamers who have moved on from dial-up are also still resistant to cloud gaming. These changes will help ease that resistance even more. But it’s premature to say this will immediately kill the PlayStation brand, and even Xbox.
But it’s definitely a big change that is putting everyone on notice.
