GeForce Now Ultimate: The ultimate gaming experience in a subscription model? Yes, but… Between Oha! and bottleneck

Let’s add it up

An AMD Ryzen 7800X3D with a Geforce RTX 4080 in Counter Strike 2 on a local computer permanently achieves around 500 – 650 FPS in this game, so our own expectations of the “Ultimate Rig” were already at a constant 240 FPS at the meagre 1080p. And the reality? The sobering result on the previous page was, despite a local ping from the GeForce Now server in Frankfurt to the Counter Strike 2 server, which was only 2 ms (ping), simply underground, i.e. it was unplayable! The FPS in deathmatch mode was not constant, so it was simply forgettable. The test was run on the high settings, which were the default and recommended graphics settings from GeForce Now.

To get a good gaming experience in a first-person shooter, a constant frame rate is absolutely essential. The more FPS, the better! Preferably as many FPS as the game engine can deliver, and the Counter Strike 2 engine is currently very good at this, considering that the world record is currently over 1,300 FPS in Counter Strike 2 with a 14900k under liquid nitrogen. Ok, NVIDIA won’t be using nitrogen-cooled servers, but what was on offer in the substructure was a bit thin.

I would like to see the GeForce Now team in Europe make some improvements here and help the “Ultimate Package” achieve better performance. In forums and on Reddit, you often read that the GeForce Now servers in the USA are equipped with better processors and deliver significantly better performance than the RTX 4080 version of the servers in Europe. Unfortunately, as players in Europe, we don’t benefit from this at all, as the latency stands in our way compared to the US servers.

@NVIDIAGFN @NVIDIAGeForceDE @NVIDIAGeForce unplayable with such a low CPU, drops below 100fps on CS2 Vertigo map in deathmatch. Even my old 9900k drops not further than 130fps on my local machine. pic.twitter.com/YLR4ZbXESJ

— olligo (@_olligo_) April 11, 2024

The business model and a few question marks in the queue

Furthermore, the general business model for the “Priority” and “Ultimate Package” is quite questionable in my opinion. As a customer, you don’t actually have any chance of testing exactly the hardware you want to play with for free beforehand, because the free trial version on GeForce Now is always operated with the weakest hardware. In my free test without a subscription, for example, I was given an RTX 2080 in Lost Ark, which had visible problems maintaining a constant frame rate of 60 FPS within the city of Lost Ark. Every now and then, the FPS of the RTX2 080 dropped to 45 FPS for a short time – from 60 FPS at the default 1080p settings of GeForce Now itself. Unnecessary as a crop, unfortunately.

You can also only view the 1080p image quality here and can’t even know how the game would look in WQHD or even 4k via the streaming service. Also noticeable in the tests was the sometimes weaker audio output, which had nothing to do with the line itself, as the packet loss and the lost images did not show any power loss in the internal NVIDIA statistics. From time to time, the sounds of the games sounded slightly worse and did not come close to the audio quality of the native gaming experience.

So if you just want to test out whether you like the “Ultimate package with the RTX 4080”, you are forced to buy an overpriced day pass for a whopping 8.79 euros. It’s almost like the fragrance samples of various brand perfumes, where the price per liter would be over 5000 euros. Here it becomes clear what psychological tricks are being used, as the user is very likely to book the whole month for 21.99 euros and not just the day pass for 8.79 euros. So if you don’t like the GeForce Now service, you’re out of luck in the end, as there is usually no money back. However, if you like it, nothing will be credited in return. Gone is gone.

Once booked, you have already paid your own lesson if the game does not run well with the server hardware in the respective region. Only in very few exceptions is it possible to get your money back from the streaming provider, which again involves a lot of effort, time and nerves. To their credit, however, NVIDIA must also be acknowledged for refunding the money without complications after a complaint (at least in my case). Since this was done without much discussion, it can probably be assumed that the problem is well known, that I am not the only one and that the provider cannot escalate.

Users should definitely pay attention here and not book the 6-month subscription model first to protect themselves from possible disappointment. NVIDIA’s cloud gaming service could certainly do a lot better with the introduction of a trial period for the Priority and Ultimate packages. Currently, the playtime for free use is 1 hour and is associated with a huge waiting time. Depending on the game, the waiting time currently ranges from 30 minutes to a humiliating 3 or 4 hours. If you want to test GeForce Now for free, you will need a lot of time and patience. However, this was not the case in the past, as a few years ago there were maximum waiting times of 10 or 15 minutes. Unfortunately, it is not officially known why the waiting times have increased so exorbitantly. It is not entirely clear whether this is due to an artificial shortage or the upgrading of the weaker server systems.

A look into the future? My wish list and a conclusion

As an optimization, NVIDIA could reduce the playing time per free session to 15 or 30 minutes per user instead of an hour, but at least allow users to test the “Priority” or “Ultimate Package” with the corresponding hardware in advance. This way, users would at least know what to expect after the purchase and what they are potentially getting themselves into, so there are no nasty surprises including termination. In my opinion, the tested Ultimate package with the RTX 4080 server version is still a long way from the ultimate gaming experience that NVIDIA is currently suggesting. This at least applies to the servers that are located here in Europe.

A lot could certainly be improved by upgrading or releasing more single-core performance, which is also urgently needed to avoid the CPU bottleneck in some games. Otherwise you could just stick with your old CPU. However, if you like single-player games that require a maximum of 60 FPS in Ultra HD and higher settings, you could be quite satisfied with the “Ultimate Package” currently on offer if the game is as good as Cyberpunk 2077.

If NVIDIA releases the RTX 50 generation in the future and upgrades the server hardware in the cloud from a 4080 to a 5080 for the large package, it would certainly save over 1000 euros in acquisition costs for the private system. This is a sum that you should of course bear in mind before planning your next gaming rig. Maybe one day you’ll be able to run Counter Strike 2 smoothly at 240 FPS in 1080p if the server CPU plays along. I hope that the provider will develop into a more customer-oriented service in the future and perhaps also adjust the price of the day passes, because €8.79 for a day pass is extremely poor value for money compared to the one-month trial version of €21.99 for the Ultimate package.

For users who require maximum image quality or many FPS with low overall system latency, switching to cloud gaming via GeForce Now is unfortunately not an option at the moment. If you want to call yourself a PC enthusiast and a real FPS gamer, you still have to remain loyal to your home, watt-guzzling computer. That’s why it’s important to be really clear about what you want to play before you buy, to find out about the games supported by GeForce Now and also how high the bar for your own PC gaming hobby really is.

Especially modders or gamers who like to work with savegames generally have no joy with cloud gaming, because it is not possible to exchange or modify any game files on the local GeForce Now server. Unfortunately, many well-known games are still missing and not everything that the community of the online portal on GeForce (or their own taste) would like to see is included. Often, however, the blame for this does not lie with GeForce Now itself, but with the companies behind the games, who are still stonewalling. As of today (April 2024), there are over 1,500 different games available for streaming on GeForce Now, and the trend is still rising. Encouraging. So let’s wait and see and stay curious and allow ourselves a little healthy skepticism with the desire to be pleasantly surprised at some point.

I have not received any compensation from NVIDIA for this review and it only reflects my own free opinion.