Published , by Chris Jarrard
Published , by Chris Jarrard
As the battle for supremacy in the cloud gaming wars continues, NVIDIA has launched the next strike. Today, the GPU giant announced that it will be adding a new tier to its GeForce Now service, allowing users to play their games at higher fidelity levels and high frame rates than ever before. The new subscription tier is powered by RTX 3080 GPUs and will slot in above the existing Priority Tier and pricing will start at $99 for a 6-month contract.
NVIDIA says it has designed a new, more advanced class of server that they are dubbing the SuperPod. Each SuperPod contains nine RTX 3080 GPUs. When a customer logs into GeForce Now using an RTX 3080 Tier subscription, supported games will now be streamed to PCs or Macs at resolutions up to 1440p and refresh rates up to 120Hz. NVIDIA mentioned that some mobile phones would also support 120Hz play if the phone’s display is capable. This is the first of the major cloud gaming providers to offer high refresh rate support to its users.
Owners of the NVIDIA Shield TV device will be able to stream up to native 4K at 60 frames per second with HDR output and 7.1 surround sound. This positions GeForce Now as a legitimate competitor to even the highest-end consoles from Sony and Microsoft. NVIDIA also says the additional processing power from the SuperPods offers a side benefit of incredibly low latency. As low as 60ms round-trip, according to NVIDIA. This would put the streaming service in league with offline play with actual consoles in regards to end-to-end latency.
Lastly, RTX 3080 Tier subscribers will have priority access to the SuperPod servers and can enjoy uninterrupted streaming sessions for as long as eight hours. Priority Tier users are limited to six-hour sessions and Free Tier users are limited to one hour. NVIDIA has opened the RTX 3080 Tier for beta testing and all GeForce Now Founders or Priority members are eligible to register for the beta. Wider availability of the RTX 3080 Tier for the public is expected sometime in November.