Game streaming

GeForce Now Ultimate first impressions: Streaming has come a really long way

At its best, Nvidia's cloud-based service feels like an extension of your hands.

Kevin Purdy – Jan 19, 2023 2:00 PM | 126

It's not actual GeForce RTX 4080 cards slotted into GeForce Now's "Superpods," but Nvidia says the hardware is pretty close. Credit: Nvidia

Cloud-based gaming service GeForce Now's new Ultimate tier is rolling out today, promising a series of adjectives about game streaming that might have seemed impossible just a few years ago: high-resolution, ray-traced, AI-upscaled, low-latency, high-refresh-rate, and even competition-ready.

I tested out the Ultimate tier, powered by Nvidia's RTX 4080 "SuperPODs," for a week on a server set up for reviewer early access. If I hadn't been hyper-conscious of frame numbers and hiccups, I could have been tricked into thinking the remote 4080 rig was local. Ultimate streaming can also be "better than local," such as when it lets you stream a AAA, ray-traced game on a low-powered laptop, tablet, or TV with no console attached.

Ars had previously described our GeForce Now 3080 experience as "dreamy" and called the performance "a white-hot stunner that rivals the computing power you can muster" with the same RTX 3080 card in your PC. It's easy to lay at least the same kind of praise on the new Ultimate tier. It replaces the previous RTX 3080 option with the next generation's chipset for the same price ($20 per month, $99 for six months). That might be a steep price tag for a service that mostly makes you buy your games, but given the 4080's $1,200 price, the rent-versus-buy question is worth considering at this level.

Ars Video

That's especially true if you want the flexibility to bring your games to screens outside your main gaming system. I got to play Hitman 3 on a MacBook Air (through a monitor) at rates higher than 60 frames per second, at medium-to-high graphics. I logged a few impressive-looking battles in Marvel's Midnight Suns, sitting on a couch with an iPad and a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. I almost felt bad when Cyberpunk 2077 on an Nvidia Shield benchmarked 90 fps at 4K on my 60 Hz TV (save those extra frames for lean times!). When playing on these lower-res or lower-refresh screens, an Ultimate stream trades impressive fidelity for stability.

Not everybody has the high-refresh monitor, or the interest in GeForce Now's particular games library, to need the Ultimate tier. But if you have wider bandwidth on your Internet connection than in budgeting for a single piece of a gaming PC, or want to test the waters of max-spec PC gaming, GeForce Now Ultimate is mighty intriguing.

Test-driving a monster GPU across the Northeast

What follows is a first impression of the service, more like a test drive than a full review covering every facet. That's for a few reasons. My monitor's refresh rate only ("only") goes to 144 Hz (i.e., 144 fps). I tend toward single-player games, not twitchy multiplayer shooters. I didn't dig much into Reflex mode, the latency-reducing setting aimed at competitive games like Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Destiny 2, and others (The Verge review leans into that aspect heavily). My personal graphics card is an RTX 3050, a budget-minded model that couldn't hope to hit 60 fps at 1440p on ultra or max settings on our test games.

In other words, I'm a PC gaming enthusiast living with a pedestrian mix of hardware—potentially just the type GeForce Now is targeting.

Still, I had some basis for comparison. I previously had a Founders Edition account that provided access to less-powerful card types (GTX 1080 and, on occasion, GTX 2060) and was familiar with the games' performance on my local RTX 3050. I mostly stuck to games in my library that worked on GeForce Now, though I briefly dipped into Destiny 2 multiplayer to see how remote multiplayer felt. And I've been a regular user of Nvidia's local-streaming GameStream, with the lowest latency you could hope for.

What you need to roll with Ultimate

GeForce Now's Ultimate tier has the same basic network requirements as other GeForce Now plans, though, at this level (and price), they're even more important. You need to connect to one of their servers at a maximum of 80 ms latency, though below 40 is recommended. Nvidia recommends Ethernet wherever possible, or at least a 5 GHz router connection if you can't summon the cable.

Whether you're ready for this high-end cloud experience depends on two main factors:

Your connection—type, speed, latency, and distance from a GeForce Now server.
Which games you have in your Steam/Epic/GOG/Ubisoft/EA libraries, whether GeForce Now supports them, and how optimized they are for both general performance and any Nvidia-specific graphics or streaming features.

I tested the Ultimate tier on a 1Gbps Fios fiber-optic connection from Washington, DC, to GeForce Now's "US Northeast" servers (supposedly in Newark, New Jersey, mostly confirmed by the "NWK" label in diagnostics). I mainly used an Ethernet-connected Windows PC hooked up to a 4K/144 GHz monitor. I also tried out a MacBook Air and Windows laptop connected to Wi-Fi (Eero 6+ mesh routers), connected to that monitor and on their own screens, and an iPad. You obviously can't get higher frames-per-second on those laptops or portable devices if their screens can't support it, but you still benefit from the improved latency, graphical effects, and steadiness of the 4080-class cards.

Speed-wise, what you need depends on what fidelity you're after. Keep in mind these are dedicated speeds; you need to have this much bandwidth free even if someone else in the home is deep in a Zoom meeting or Netflix binge.

45Mbps to stream at 4K quality (3840×2160p) and 120 fps
35Mbps for 2560×1600p or 2560×1440p at 120 fps
35Mbps for 1080p at 240 fps (for games that support Reflex)

If you have an ultrawide monitor, Ultimate can meet you at 3840×1600, 3440×1440, or 2560×1080 resolutions, generally with a 35Mbps minimum.

Assuming you have a Mac or PC (there's no Linux option for GeForce Now unless you count Chrome/Edge browsers) and that strong connection, you're good to go. There is no trial period for Ultimate membership, though there is a free tier with which you can check your connection. AT&T 5G customers can also try the lower-powered Priority for six months.

Let’s play some games in Newark

GeForce Now has a frames-per-second counter, which you'll see in most of my screenshots. It measures ping latency, the frames per second of the video stream sent out by your remote rig, and the game frames per second as you're experiencing it. I sometimes kept a separate frame counter running (whether from Steam or the game itself); they were largely concurrent, although they updated at different intervals, making it hard to compare.

In our review of the "offline" RTX 4080, Assassin's Creed Odyssey ran at an average of 92.1 frames per second at 4K resolution and ultra high settings. Playing it on GeForce Now Ultimate at the same settings, I saw my fps count occasionally dip to the 77-80 range during the most frenetic jump/kick/stab, but it mostly stayed above 100 and below 110. Fighting about a dozen bandits on a Mediterranean island felt fluid, and I didn't feel dropped frames.

Scene from Assassin's Creed Odyssey screenshot, showing 101 fps game, 120 fps stream — *Assassin's Creed Odyssey* running on GeForce Now Ultimate at 4K and Ultra High settings. Note the FPS counter in the upper-right corner. Credit: Kevin Purdy

When a game lets you enable DLSS, your loaned-out 4080 really gets to strut. Nvidia's third-generation Deep Learning Super Sampling tech (detailed in our 4090 review) majorly eases the frame pipeline for games. The most impressive example was Hitman 3, where even in the depth of Dubai's large crowds, surrounded by reflective puddles, ray-traced shadows, and lots of anxious bystander movement, my frame rate almost never dropped below 70. In our physical RTX 4080 tests, Hitman 3 at 4K with maxed-out settings, on the same level, pushed the card to a limit of 44.3. I almost have to believe a setting or two is different between the two tests (or the performance has been improved in patches). But if I had to show somebody the potential of Ultimate tier, I'd let them parachute into a super-skyscraper and strangle some rich folk.

Agent 47 pushing through a crowd in Dubai skyscraper. — *Hitman 3*'s Dubai level, with Agent 47's pleasant pate moving through the crowd.

We haven't tested Marvel's Midnight Suns yet on other hardware. It's not a third-person action game or first-person shooter, but a turn-based strategy game (from the makers of XCOM). It's less graphically intense than prior games mentioned. Still, it has some kinetic moments, including the epic moves you save up for over multiple turns, only to fire off in a colorized, camera-panning release. Midnight Suns held up well over a network, and I could push it nearly to 120 fps at 4K, with settings alternating between High and Epic.

You get it by now: I'm impressed with how well 4K gaming worked over a series of network hops between DC and Newark. Throughout my week of testing, my latency was almost always between 10-17 ms, and games didn't stutter when I noticed the latency jump for a single moment. When I lowered the resolution closer to 1440p or 1080p, such as when using a laptop or iPad over Wi-Fi, the stream was even more stable.

It's an understatement to say your mileage will likely vary. I had maybe five or six moments over the space of a week where I felt a game chugging and saw my latency rise, seemingly due to just normal network variations. You can do a lot to set yourself up for network success, but traffic happens. And I was playing on a server specifically set up for early access reviewers.

GeForce Now never dropped entirely for me during a streamed game—except for the Witcher 3 next-gen update, which stuttered, stopped, and generally seemed dehydrated and confused, though Nvidia is aware of the problems and working on a fix. It's an extreme example, but some games, even those with DLSS and other Nvidia-friendly features, are going to be easier to beam into your house than others.

The catch: You can’t play everything (though it’s getting better)

With Stadia shut down, GeForce Now stands out even further from its major competition: Xbox Game Pass and Amazon's Luna service. Unlike those services, you don't pay for a Netflix-style subscription or content "tiers" from specific publishers. If you already bought a game from a major PC gaming store, and GeForce Now supports it, you can play it through GeForce Now, free or paid. (Tip: Download the free client and scan your game libraries, rather than searching one by one.)

That makes the $20/month cost of an Ultimate subscription, or even the $10/month Priority package, a tricky question for those without a huge library and backlog. GeForce Now is opt-in for publishers, so there's Horizon Zero Dawn or God of War (Sony), Overwatch or Call of Duty (Activision Blizzard), Elden Ring, Skyrim, and some other notable titles, largely from firms that have their own stores or streaming ambitions.

There is, however, Cult of the Lamb and Tunic, most games from Ubisoft and EA, and about 1,500 others, including lots of high-res and indie-style games from non-giant developers and publishers. For the 4080 tier to pay off, specifically, you'd want to have a few games lined up that can really stretch your remote rig. That will certainly apply to some people, but uncertainty about future releases can skew the value.

And yet, GeForce Now Ultimate, at $20 per month and hooked to a good line, is an impressive high-fidelity loan of $1,200 hardware. The service has RTX 4080 rigs live in San Jose, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Frankfurt; there's a map, regular "GFN Thursday" blog posts, and updates in the GeForce Experience app on Windows to see where the next locations will be announced. Ultimate subscribers who don't have 4080 servers within range will typically be connected to 3080 units instead, though you can manually choose your server in the GeForce Now app if you're willing to suffer the latency hit.

Listing image: Kevin Purdy / Firaxis

Kevin Purdy Senior Technology Reporter

Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch.

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