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Nvidia GeForce NOW Client Gains Official Support for Apple Silicon Macs
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Which router do you have? I'm using a single Google Wifi AP and recently discovered they only support a single 5ghz channel (149?) and that's just what you get. My wife uses a 2012 MBP with Steam in-home streaming to a PC but that single shared channel is rough.
WiFi is going to be dependent on distance between devices, amount/composition of walls/obstructions, what other networks are in the neighborhood, etc. That said it *can* work fine over WiFi if you have a good connection - but it will also pretty quickly show you if you only thought you had a good connection.
Wired will nearly always be better if you can set it up.
That said: The service is great, and I'm having minimal issues - some occasional stutter on the wifi, but not worth my trying to fix it. Lag is barely noticeable for most uses - so far I've mostly noticed it in high-speed driving in Cyberpunk 2077, and haven't noticed it at all in other games.
Wired will nearly always be better if you can set it up.
That said: The service is great, and I'm having minimal issues - some occasional stutter on the wifi, but not worth my trying to fix it. Lag is barely noticeable for most uses - so far I've mostly noticed it in high-speed driving in Cyberpunk 2077, and haven't noticed it at all in other games.
Just wondering if anyone can answer this.
If you buy a Windows only game off of Steam and you only have a Mac would using this service run the game through your Mac as normal or are you still restricted to Mac games?
Just curious because there have been some games I was interested in but never got because I have no interest in installing Windows on my Mac.
If you buy a Windows only game off of Steam and you only have a Mac would using this service run the game through your Mac as normal or are you still restricted to Mac games?
Just curious because there have been some games I was interested in but never got because I have no interest in installing Windows on my Mac.
I have 1 Gbps down, 60 Mbps up, stupid cable. Speeds similar are available on many US cable systems. Nearby homes with fiber have 1 Gbps down AND 1 Gbps up.
As long as the game is supported via this service (not all games are), yes you can buy the game through Steam (or GOG, or Epic) and use it through this service.
Note that a couple of us have already commented on playing Cyberpunk 2077 through this, which is Windows (and console) only.
Average US speed is 135Mbps, you are very much an outlier. My point still remains that here is no need for WiFi to be able to do 500Mbps if the internet connection is only lower, i.e. 135Mbps on average in the US.
Yes, WiFi causing problems, but that does not require WiFi transmitting at 500Mbps does it. Even with your 5G the WiFi would only need to be capable of feeding that. As with other replies, you are very much an outlier in terms of connection speed. My point is you don't need a WiFi connection capable of transmitting that much if your outgoing connection can't send that, so that part of the information was not helpful.
Same, I was surprised at how responsive it all is. I mean it's probably not going to beat a gaming PC - but I'm not going to get RTX features on a Mac any other way.
Has anyone managed to get the M1 version? I downloaded the installer from the web site and it upgraded to 2.0.27 immediately after installation but the version on my M1 MacBook Pro is still Intel. I even tried removing the app and reinstalling fresh but had the same results.
Nearly unnoticeable for me. In fact, I only notice it during high-speed driving, and even then it's minimal. (And it could just be that driving in the game is pretty horrible in the first place - or that my wifi is good but not great.)
Surely you have the older Xbox One S controller. The new Xbox One X controller doesn't work with Stadia although you can pair it. New Sony PS5 Dualsense controller does work with Stadia.
I'm pretty sure that this and all the other news articles are jumping to incorrect conclusions here - either that or our M1 Macs aren't updating correctly. Mine just updated to v2.0.27 and there isn't a whiff of any arm in sight.
The important part from the "Release Highlights" explicitly says:
"Did you get a new Mac with the Apple M1 chip over the holidays? Good news: Our latest v2.0.27 macOS app officially supports these Apple products"
Now, where in those two sentences does it say it runs on Arm or Universal binaries? I think people are jumping to conclusions here! In my view, "supports these Apple products" is a world away from "runs on native Arm binaries on these Apple products"
Is anyone from Mac Rumours able to reach out to Nvidia and actually confirm the accuracy of the news story??
I mean, it would be nice if we're wrong and our apps are just not updating correctly. But I have my doubts.
The important part from the "Release Highlights" explicitly says:
"Did you get a new Mac with the Apple M1 chip over the holidays? Good news: Our latest v2.0.27 macOS app officially supports these Apple products"
Now, where in those two sentences does it say it runs on Arm or Universal binaries? I think people are jumping to conclusions here! In my view, "supports these Apple products" is a world away from "runs on native Arm binaries on these Apple products"
Is anyone from Mac Rumours able to reach out to Nvidia and actually confirm the accuracy of the news story??
I mean, it would be nice if we're wrong and our apps are just not updating correctly. But I have my doubts.
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Honestly, I also think it's not native yet, I just think that maybe M1 devices now have technical support? but idk what they mean. I'm in a reddit convo with another person who commented exactly that, maybe you're the same person! But anyway, we both think that it's a misinterpretation of words.
No, but the Tx rate is a good indication of your real WiFi signal quality. If you're getting low speeds on a 5 GHz WiFi connection, then you're probably also going to have added lag and stutter due to signal noise, retransmits, etc. Typically you won't notice these things just browsing websites or watching Netflix etc, but they become a problem when gaming.
It's not only about throughput. The quality and latency of the connection is really important for game streaming.
It's not actually that great an indication of WiFi signal quality - while they're related, they aren't all that closely coupled.
Better is to do a ping test to your wifi router in Terminal. (Often at 192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.1.) Let it run for ~50 or so pings, and then ctrl-C to end, and check the output.
So for my box:
Code:
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=3.332 ms
....
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=53 ttl=64 time=8.811 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
54 packets transmitted, 54 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.988/7.394/118.379/16.692 msYou're looking at the last two lines. First, the packet loss - anything other than 0.0% and you're having trouble. (Possible exception if you cut it off before the last packet returned.) Then there's the min/avg/max/stddev: On a great connection, all four of those will be low. Mine is only a 'good' connection: You'll note that my max is quite high, but min, avg, and stddev are all fairly low - so *most* of the packets get through quickly, but there's occasional ones that have issues.
What this translates to in GeForce Now for me is that games play pretty well, but I'll have occasional stutter or the game will drop resolution for a bit. It's unnoticable in other web use - even videoconferencing works fine.
I have a suspicion that the occasional stuttering you get in certain games is actually a problem at Stadia's end. Because it seems to happen at "cpu intensive" times, doesn't seem to matter how good your connection speed is, and like you say, only in certain games. Many other games are buttery smooth all the time.
Thank you for explaining "ping" to me. I have been a professional software developer for about 20 years, but somehow never come across it before. What a great tool!
Seriously though, yes, you're right. Gamers call the variance between the fastest and slowest pings "jitter". And on a WiFi connection you will notice that jitter, and pings in general, tend to get worse as you get further away from the base station and the Tx rate drops.
I'm not entirely sure this is what causes the occasional stuttering in certain Stadia games, though. Because those seem to happen even on ethernet, and only in certain games.
A software developer I expect to know of it. A system administrator I expect to understand it. A co-op gamer I expect to be familiar with the concepts. A random desktop user may have never heard of it. I don't know which anyone is.
Very cool, thanks.
I guess I'll see if it'll play some 32-bit games that became unplayable after Apple stopped supporting that. Hopefully, those guys opted into the program.
I did plenty of testing with GeForce NOW, and it just works so much better with ethernet. I have a symmetric gigabit internet here with a very fast router (Unify Dream Machine), my ping to Nvidia servers is around 10-15ms even on WIFI. But I am still having occasional slowdowns and dropped frames, while ethernet is rock solid 1200p streaming.
Someone told me that Apple location services are a culprit — and they indeed are, macOS triggers a WiFi scan every few minutes that just slows the connection down to the crawl, but even disabling it doesn't completely make the occasional lag go away. I hope that future WIFI standards with more focused beam-forming will be able to implement more reliable connections.