Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

CES 2017: Nvidia's 'GeForce Now' Cloud Service to Bring High-End PC Gaming to Mac

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
66,319
35,366



Tonight at its CES 2017 keynote event, Nvidia announced GeForce Now for Mac and PC, a cloud gaming service that allows low-end Mac and PC users to play high-end PC games. The service is similar to an identically-named service for Nvidia Shield users.

geforcenow-800x382.png

Nvidia says that there are an estimated 1 billion PC users who have integrated GPUs that can't play games "to their full potential." GeForce Now allows those users to access a Pascal-powered PC in the cloud to play games to their full potential.

In addition to letting users with low-end computers play high-end games, the service will become one of the few ways Mac users can play the latest AAA PC games. According to The Verge, Nvidia showed off the service by playing Rise of the Tomb Raider on an iMac. Rise of the Tomb Raider is not yet available for macOS.

GeForce Now doesn't stream games from the cloud to a user's computer, similar to how Netflix streams movies to various devices, reports Engadget. GeForce Now is more like a high-end PC in the cloud that runs a user's games. Users will have to purchase their games from online distributors like Steam and Origin. Once they're purchased, they can use the power of GeForce's GRID servers to run them on their computers.

The service will cost $25 for every 20 hours of play. Nvidia says the service will start rolling out in March

Article Link: CES 2017: Nvidia's 'GeForce Now' Cloud Service to Bring High-End PC Gaming to Mac
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/04/ces-2017-geforce-now-pc-gaming-on-mac/
zorinlynx said:
What's with this obsession with running our software on remote systems and using our computers as, basically, thin clients or terminals?

This model of computing became outdated in the 90s. Why are we going back to it?

I can't imagine games to be very playable on this setup due to latency, jitter, lost packets, and so on.
Click to expand...


I think the thin client model is still in use in many places actually. This just seems like a strange implementation.
 
So that's why nvidia priced their products so high. They don't want you to buy them at all, because they need all the chips to build their cloud GPU?!
[doublepost=1483590486][/doublepost]
zorinlynx said:
What's with this obsession with running our software on remote systems and using our computers as, basically, thin clients or terminals?

This model of computing became outdated in the 90s. Why are we going back to it?

I can't imagine games to be very playable on this setup due to latency, jitter, lost packets, and so on.
Click to expand...
Unix nostalgia....
 
Computer / system architecture repeats itself.

We've seen fat clients, thin clients, several times in the past 30 / 40 years. Technology improves that makes it viable again.

Cloud computing is basically thin clients - a web or mobile front end for example - with an app server(s)

zorinlynx said:
What's with this obsession with running our software on remote systems and using our computers as, basically, thin clients or terminals?

This model of computing became outdated in the 90s. Why are we going back to it?

I can't imagine games to be very playable on this setup due to latency, jitter, lost packets, and so on.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: LiveM and djgamble
and they said I couldn't Overwatch on OS X....




(idk if this allows me to play overwatch on my mac though)
 
zorinlynx said:
What's with this obsession with running our software on remote systems and using our computers as, basically, thin clients or terminals?

This model of computing became outdated in the 90s. Why are we going back to it?

I can't imagine games to be very playable on this setup due to latency, jitter, lost packets, and so on.
Click to expand...

I used to use OnLive. It was super playable. The only downside is that the video quality wasn't as crisp as playing it natively. It's like viewing a 1080p video on Youtube vs viewing that 1080p video before Youtube recompressed it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: H2SO4 and LiveM
zorinlynx said:
What's with this obsession with running our software on remote systems and using our computers as, basically, thin clients or terminals?

This model of computing became outdated in the 90s. Why are we going back to it?
Click to expand...

Explain why its outdated. I see some major changes since the 90s:
1. Users are dumber (everybody has to use a computer, not just a professional) while software and problems (security!) has increased exponentially in complexity. Centralized support has become much more efficient.

2. Communication has become much cheaper and bandwidth increased. You used to be stuck on 1200 bps paying $.50 (1985) a minute to get data across the country.

3. Timesharing makes sense economically. You don't play games 100% of the time, and you use the same programs as other people. You can share hardware. With rising energy costs, this is critical. With mobile computing you have the stagnation of battery technology and the end of Moore's law.

4. Hardware lifecycles are decreasing. NVidia puts out new products every 6 months whereas the Mac Plus sold for 4.5 years. Sharing hardware lets you have the latest products by spreading the cost among others.

Real-time communication by text was outdated by the 80s too when everybody got a telephone and threw away their Telex. What's this obsession with texting?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Gasu E., jovada, bomberal123 and 9 others
When he began talking about how people may have a notebook and they want more powerful graphics I was fully expecting him to announce a slim form factor external GPU dock using Thunderbolt 3.

But instead we get .. GeForce Now.. A streaming service with noticeable high latency over a real life GPU connected right to your computer.

And $25 for 20 hours .. that seems rather high to me to be honest, a real GPU would be a lot cheaper over the long run.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Agit21, Exile714, ceeekay and 1 other person
Yikes. Unlike PSNow, you have to buy the games in addition to the fee...yikes. So 1,000 hours would cost $1250, the cost of a good gaming rig to begin with. Throw in a Steam Link and you have the exact same thing: AAA streaming on your Mac with less latency.

This seems like it would be only good for extremely casual users who only want to rarely play the occasional AAA game.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LiveM
Sooooo you have to buy the game...THEN pay by the hour to play it...yeaaaaa doesn't sound like a good idea....
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: LiveM
If this was a $10 a month unlimited service, I think people would look into it. As it is now, it sounds like a really bad deal. Their competition is now the eGPU market. You can build an eGPU for like $450, which would pay for itself before this becomes economical.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LiveM
Freyqq said:
If this was a $10 a month unlimited service, I think people would look into it. As it is now, it sounds like a really bad deal. Their competition is now the eGPU market. You can build an eGPU for like $450, which would pay for itself before this becomes economical.
Click to expand...

That's not competition until all the games are available on Mac at the same time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back