Hands-on: Nvidia’s GeForce Now RTX 5080 is better and worse than I hoped

Today, NVIDIA launches the latest graphics processing units in the cloud-which eventually upgrades a $ 20-value service with a $ 20 with Graphics RTX 5080 for chosen games, with more to be able to reach the road. At the same time, it also adds thousands of other titles to your gaming service by allowing you to install them yourself, with a 360 Hz position to high -speed desktop, with the release of the 90 Hz version of the Steam Deck application, and more.

Do all of these changes make GeForce now essentially better? Certainly, it was already good! But although I couldn’t escape thought: it is good that NVIDIA does not charge an additional shipment of most of the updates, because it is somewhat frustrating at the present time.

Do not understand me wrong, the authority is more welcome, and more strength is what I saw. in The shades of the killer of belief and Cyberpunk 2077“Integrated criteria, two of the few who managed to run, the RTX 5080 of the cloud in NVIDIA has offered anywhere from 25 to 50 percent on the old RTX 4080 servers with 4K resolution.

This is enough to play the previous in the settings near the tax on 4K TV, and the last in 4K if You can either sacrifice Ray or let Nvidia’s DLSS 4 Generation add an additional fake frame for each real frame to soften things. for me Cyberpunk Fraameate is better than we saw with the physical card!

But I soon discovered that, as with this material RTX 5080, the company’s marketing is moving faster than its technology can go to.

There are very few games that support RTX 5080 as of launch to the point that I have difficulty finding them, and there is currently no way to tell her after You are releasing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 or The grave remained Ryder It is still working on the 4080 -category graphics processing unit instead.

For a promising, promising NVIDia 5080 tire gain gains, you will need to create three fake tires for each real frame – which, when collecting them with delayed cloud games, slowly slow down the speed that the game interacts with your movements. I didn’t need to spend a long time trying a 3X and 4X frame in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle To find that he was not continuing for me: I imagined the game Indie in his pride, but he suddenly felt like a slow old man.

But I will admit 2x Gen, I already felt somewhat life in a cloud connection, at least when connected directly to my desktop via ETHERNET.

On the quick side of things, my colleague Tom Warren tried to go out Overwatch 2 In the new 360Hz new mode, he says he found it “easy to be able to compete”, but unfortunately this situation is limited to 1080 pixels. “The broadcast at 1080 pixels on a 4K screen was not the best,” he says.

It is important to note that the 360 ​​Hz screen purchase point is usually for better reaction times in electronic sports games, not the smooth frame itself, and NVIDIA does not take you anywhere near the reaction time of 360 Hz (2.78 mm) in this way. But Nafidia claims to deliver up to 360 frames per second He can Get 30 milliliters, which is incredible for cloud games and should be better than your living room control. in Overwatch 2 For example, NVIDIA says it only adds 1.8 mm of encryption, 0.3 mm of decoding, and 9 milliliters of game and width engine activity, to the time it takes to press and send data online to NVIDIA and return.

Meanwhile, although Steam Steam 90Hz is unambiguously an upgrade to the Steam Deck OLED 90Hz screen, which makes a generally smoother experience, I was surprised to find RTX 5080 not necessarily improve performance after that. in Claire mysterious: Expered house 33, RTX 5080 was not enough to play the game at 4K on MAX Settings More than RTX 4080, so I tested in 1440 pixels, and I saw almost the same frame of 55 frames per second (lower in a large outdoor battle) to 90 frames per second (internal environment) regardless of the GPU I that I was using.

(Yes, I recommend broadcasting with much higher decisions than 800 pixels on a screen of 800 pixels from the deck, because excessive planning makes a more clear and effective image with fewer artifacts of cloud games.)

Finally, not another, you have experienced the new NVIDIA new “installation feature”, which should significantly increase the number of games that you can play on GeForce now by allowing you to install any game chosen in Steam Cloud from Valve, even if NVIDIA does not take time to test. There, GeFORCE now displays its copy of Steam so that you can install any game you have before:

Install these games faster than I imagined: it took 17 seconds to install 1.4 GB A landfill and adventures; 53 seconds to install 8 GB 1000xrististThe game that I did not stop thinking about the year, one minute 22 seconds to install 2.2 GB of Knights of the old republicAnd 2 minutes 9 seconds to install Sleeping dogs 10.5 GB of data.

But although the installation to the play works, and it may soon be acceptable not to bother to push more to avoid having to reinstall each session (ongoing storage is $ 3 for 200 GB, or $ 5 for 500 GB, or 8 dollars compared to 1 TB per month), but it is not filled after the majority of GeForCe now in the way I wish.

I only added 21 other games to the GeForce Now Library. Without installing to play, I can not reach only 162 out of 472 of my Steam games via NVIDIA’s Cloud, and this number is not joking a little bit. Now I can play Former Dios and System shock 2 and The grave is a memorial and Golden idol Games, certainly, but realistically, I was playing this deck on the deck. Perhaps you feel differently if I only have a phone or chrome chrome, though. Perhaps we will really see the advantage of moving forward, as it allows NVIDIA to add new addresses much more quickly than before.

Just do not expect from Sony or Rockstar Bring their computers games to the service.

Finally, although I expect this to be one of the symptoms of pre -launch test servers, I have faced unusual errors testing GFN RTX 5080 and installation to play. The customer sometimes forgot my broadcast settings; GEFORCE now thought I was trying to log in from Virginia and Steam Combined this login; I faced other login problems and black screens from time to time, games synchronization problems with Steam and Uplay, I found that some games will not be launched immediately after clicking on them, and so on.

If you see these problems themselves, or if you find that the installation to the play brings new sudden jewels, tell me that!