NVIDIA have today released the Beta for their new Native Linux app for GeForce NOW, available as a Flatpak so it should run across most x86-64 systems. Thanks to NVIDIA I was able to get some early testing in to see how the experience holds up, with NVIDIA providing Ultimate-plan access.
What actually is it? GeForce NOW is a cloud gaming service from NVIDIA. It allows you to play games streamed from their servers to your devices. This includes various free to play games and games you own from your own libraries across Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox PC Game Pass, Battle.net, Ubisoft Connect and EA. There’s currently over 4,500 games available.
I played all of cyberpunk on a MacBook Air using this back when it came out and it was pretty awesome
I get the hate but if you don’t own a gaming computer it’s pretty good
The hate comes from the fact that these companies don’t want you to own a gaming computer or any computer anymore. These tech companies want you to rent forever and never own anything because owning doesn’t make them all the money.
Combine that with the AI driven memory shortage and NVIDIA moving away from making gaming video cards and cutting their MSPR program it’s clear that they don’t want you to own anything going forward and just be only steaming on their servers and not just having it be an option.
I know, I said I get the hate but I don’t have a gaming computer anyway so it was pretty awesome nonetheless
If ai crashes out we can buy all the cards when the data centers go under and sell them all back
Yeah. And it’s dirt cheap. For now.
Use it while it’s subsidized, and drop it like a rock the instant it enshittifies. That’s been the optimal strategy for pretty much everything.
Last I heard they limited the number of hours you can play and raised the price. It’s probably going to get worse real soon.
For some context, in the machine learning GPU market, Nvidia makes basically two products:
Supercomputer chips with HBM memory. This is the A100, H100, B200, along with AMD’s MI325X and such; things you won’t even find as PCIe cards. These cannot game.
Then there’s repurposed gaming silicon, like the L40, A40 and such. These are 3090/4090/5090 silicon dies with more VRAM hanging off, but otherwise basically identical. These can game.
In a nutshell, everyone wants the former. No one wants the latter; to the point where Nvidia stipulates “if you buy H200s, so must also buy this many L40s” in big business contracts. They can’t even get buyers to take them.
Where I’m going with this is that, contrary to what you hear, Nvidia has a whole bunch of “budget” server GPUs piling up that no one really wants for their still-astronomical asking price. This has been happening for a few years. They’ve got to do something with them, and they’re basically perfect for cloud gaming.
Hence cloud gaming is relatively cheap now, even with price adjustments. It’s cheap because the hardware is in surplus and the service is new. But this is not going to last, and I guarantee you will see major cloud gaming price hikes in the future over the shrinking surplus.
However, I’m saying that it is really cheap now and it’s gonna stay that way in the short term. The adjustments so far are pretty minor.
Small correction: the A100, H100, and B200 all have PCIe configurations.
But as you said, no gaming. No directX and no HDMI output even
Yeah. They aren’t common though, especially with the H200 and on where they’re mostly sold as SXM.
The A100 can actually game, either streaming it or using another card for output. The H100 technically can; it has everything needed, but (if I recall correctly) so few ROPs that it’s as slow as molasses.
Interestingly, the AMD MI300X and on omit ROPs entirely. Unlike Nvidia, aren’t needed for any backwards compatibility, I suppose.
Graphics cards are climbing faster