What you need to know
- NVIDIA recently unveiled a new tier of GeForce Now that will give its subscribers RTX 3080 levels of performance.
- The new tier launched first in the U.S. and provides up to 1440p gaming at up to 120FPS from a 35mbps connection.
- Subscriptions will be handed out to those who registered first but there will be a cap on who can get in.
Back in October NVIDIA shook the world of cloud gaming with the announcement of a new tier offering RTX 3080 levels of performance. Initially, this new tier was limited to North America, but today the company is announcing the first rollout of the new servers in Europe.
"Starting today, RTX 3080 memberships are activating in Europe for gamers who preordered. RTX 3080 members enjoy higher resolutions, lower latency, and the longest gaming session length — clocking in at eight hours — on top of the most control over in-game settings.Rollouts for accounts will continue until all requests have been fulfilled. Preorders for six-month RTX 3080 memberships are still being accepted in Europe and North America, and will continue pending availability."
There is a cap on how many subscriptions can be active at first because of capacity. The new RTX 3080 tier isn't simply tacked onto the existing GeForce Now infrastructure, instead, it runs off NVIDIA's new "Superpods" which is also going to be why the rollout is staggered. After all, you can't play if the servers haven't been installed.
Pricing for the new tier costs $100 for six-months access, and with just a 35mbps connection can deliver up to 1440p at 120FPS as well as NVIDIA tech such as RTX ray tracing and DLSS. Each subscriber to the RTX 3080 tier gets access to a virtual machine the equivalent of an 8-core, 16-thread CPU, paired with a PCIe 4.0 SSD and the GPU power of an RTX 3080 (though the servers don't actually use consumer RTX 3080s).
As it's the first Thursday in the month NVIDIA also has a bunch of new games to talk about that will be joining the service in the coming weeks. These include new game launches Chorus and Icarus, alongside existing games liked Dead by Daylight (Epic's free game of the week) and many more besides.
Arriving this week:
- Chorus (new game launch on Steam and Epic Games Store)
- Icarus (new game launch on Steam)
- MXGP 2021 - The Official Motocross Videogame (new game launch on Steam)
- Propnight (new game launch on Steam)
- Wartales (new game launch on Steam)
- Dead by Daylight (free on Epic Games Store)
- Hextech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story (Steam and Epic Games Store)
- Ruined King: A League of Legends Story (Steam and Epic Games Store)
- Timberborn (Steam and Epic Games Store)
Also coming in December:
- A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism (new game launch on Steam)
- Monopoly Madness (new game launch on Ubisoft Connect)
- Syberia: The World Before (new game launch on Steam and Epic Games Store)
- White Shadows (new game launch on Steam)
- BattleBeasts (Steam)
- FOREWARNED (Steam)
- Operencia: The Stolen Sun (Steam)
- Super Magbot (Steam)
- Tannenberg (Steam and Epic Games Store)
- Untitled Goose Game (Epic Games Store)
- Wargroove (Steam)
As I'm in the UK I've been waiting (im)patiently to try out the new tier. In a time when getting a new graphics card is impossible or stupidly expensive, NVIDIA is making it so we don't even need to go get one. As GeForce Now continues to build out it's getting closer and closer to being able to replace a gaming PC and I'm really excited to see where we are with it a year from now.
NVIDIA's cloud game streaming service is one of the best available today, delivering lag-free gaming at 1080p/60fps. The fact that you can access NVIDIA's servers for free makes it an easy sell, and the $9.99 plan makes it an immediately enticing option for seasoned gamers.
