GeForce Now: You bring the games, Nvidia streams the hardware

A free plan lets you test drive this game-streaming service.

- KEVIN CASPER

GeForce Now is Nvidia's cloud-based game-streaming service. For those who aren't familiar with this concept, it means that Nvidia provides the hardware firepower via its own media servers. Instead of you installing a game to your PC and needing an expensive GPU to get the most out of it, you just need a strong, stable internet connection and a subscription to Nvidia's service, which can range from free to $20 per month. Note: The games themselves are not provided at any subscription level-more on that point when we talk about games below.

THE PLANS

GeForce Now currently offers three tiers: Free, Priority, and RTX 3080.

GeForce Now is currently the only major cloud gaming service offering a Free access plan. While many services offer a temporary free trial, the GeForce Now Free plan is full access to the service with no long-term limitations. However, there are some short-term ones.

Each tier comes with a limit to how long you can be connected to a gaming session at a time. The Free tier is limited to one hour, Priority subscribers can play for up to six hours per session, and RTX 3080 subscribers get eight-hour sessions. There is no set limit to the number of sessions you can start in a day. The free tier also doesn't feature "RTX On," Nvidia's term for ray-tracing and DLSS support.

There's a priority component to the tiers, too, as Nvidia places limitations on the overall process and user loads on GeForce Now's regional data centers. Free members have the lowest priority in connecting to the service, which can mean waiting in line to connect to a rig at times. Priority and RTX 3080 have priority access to the queue, with RTX 3080 members getting access to systems that provide RTX 3080 GPUs. There may be times when an RTX 3080 rig is not available for a member, which will send that member to the Priority queue instead.