Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming service is due to receive a significant upgrade later this month, boosting the top tier subscription's capabilities to what it describes as "RTX 5080 performance", thanks to some upgraded SuperPods. Our Jacob briefly got his hands on the upgrade at an Nvidia event and came away fairly impressed, but I found myself curious.
What's it like in comparison to an actual RTX 5080 machine? And could it really fool me into believing I was playing my games locally, as opposed to streaming through a home broadband connection?
To find out, I've been granted early access to the new top-tier GeForce Now subscription—and I've been directly comparing it to the experience of using one of our Cyberpower benchmarking PCs. It's an RTX 5080-equipped beastie we use for testing, and certainly belongs in the upper echelons of performance machines in 2025, what with its AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, 32 GB of speedy DDR5, and of course, Nvidia's second-from-the-top graphics card. Could the streaming service really compete with such a behemoth, crunching games away locally beneath my feet?
Being a cloud-based service, GFN's performance is limited by the capabilities of the connection it's running through, with at least a 65 Mbps line required for 2160p streaming at 120 fps. Still, my home broadband service is fairly chonky by UK standards, reporting a 382.6 Mbps download speed with a max 38.7 Mbps upload. Yep, British upload speeds suck compared to the US. We make better tea, though, so it all evens out.
According to GFN's connection tester, my humble internet line is more than enough for its purposes, so I immediately jumped into a game I'm familiar with—Doom: The Dark Ages. It's very well-optimised (as our Nick found in his performance testing), plenty fast-paced enough to reveal input lag issues, and runs superbly on a local RTX 5080 without any Multi Frame Generation help.
PC Gamer test platform
Supplied by Cyberpower | MSI
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D | GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 5080 16G Ventus 3X OC White | Motherboard: MSI MPG X870E Edge Ti WiFi | RAM: Kingston Fury Beast RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) @ 6,000 MT/s | Cooler: MAG CoreLiquid i360 White | SSD: Spatium M480 Pro 2 TB | PSU: MPG A1000GS PCIe 5 | Case: MAG Pano 100R White
We've found MFG to be prone to the odd latency issue of its own when cranked to the guns, although the RTX 5080 usually handles it with aplomb. Still, for testing purposes I've been switching back and forth with MFG enabled and disabled, in order to see what sort of effect it might have on the latency stack.
GFN allows you to switch between five streaming quality settings, each having an impact on the performance, image quality, and data usage of the platform. Alongside Custom, Balanced and Data Saver settings, you also get Competitive Mode, which Nvidia says optimises your streaming settings for the lowest possible latency, (also boosting the frame rate up to a 360 fps maximum for esports-like shenanigans), and a new mode, Cinematic.
This is said to prioritise image quality for a more local-like experience, but Nvidia recommends Balanced Mode for "everyday testing", so that's exactly what I started with.
The first thing I noticed, swapping back and forth between the local machine and GFN, is the slight difference in performance. The RTX 5080 tier isn't using the same GPU you or I would pick up off the shelves, as what you're actually granted access to appears to be roughly half of an RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Series card, hence Nvidia's claims that you're actually getting "more than a 5080" with the Ultimate tier subscription. This has proven out in my testing, as I've regularly observed GFN's frame rate spiking five to 10 fps more than my local machine on average.
In Balanced mode, games run and stream at a 1440p resolution, which is trifling for an RTX 5080 (or equivalent) to run at high frame rates, even with MFG disabled. While the stream itself runs at 60 fps, having a 120 fps+ frame rate behind the scenes certainly makes for a locked-in, smooth-feeling experience.
It's so robust in this mode I could quite easily be fooled into thinking Doom: The Dark Ages was running locally, and have in fact double checked myself on occasion to make sure I haven't booted the game up on the actual RTX 5080 by mistake. The ping has reliably sat in the 21-24 ms range, which makes for a remarkably tight experience. I last sat down with the latest Doom game a few months ago, and jumping back in via GFN feels spookily familiar.
And, it must be said, my MFG-enhanced latency worries appear to have been for nowt, at least in this particular game. While I'd say Doom does look (and feel) a little wooly with MFG at its maximum 4x setting, I can replicate the effect on my test rig just as well as I can with the cloud-based solution.
It feels fine, though. And given the grunt of the RTX 5080-equivalent running underneath, dropping the Frame Gen down to 3x or 2x tightens things up significantly while maintaining an excellent frame rate, just the same as it does on a local machine.
Still, 1440p is one thing. Boosting things up to 4K streaming with GFN's Cinematic Mode, however, has introduced the odd glitch. By default, this mode streams at 60 fps, but at 4K this seems to cause an odd frame rate interaction—resulting in a reportedly high frame rate behind the scenes, but a slightly hitchy visual experience in person. It's a difficult thing to highlight on video, but if you pay close attention to the in-game capture below you can just about see the crunch, particularly when I use the shield dash.
For what it's worth I've had no such problems at 1440p, even when boosting the frames into high heaven with 4x MFG. Still, it's a black mark in GFN's scorebook, and one that made me switch to 120 fps 4K streaming via the Custom setting with dread. If it hitches at 4K 60 fps, what could it possibly be like at 120?
I needn't have worried. Oh my goodness does it work well at these settings. With one simple tweak, my hitching issue disappeared, and what I was left with is an experience that I'd say is remarkably similar to local. It's genuinely impressive just how good this game feels running at 4K over an internet connection, and how close it feels to the experience of it running under my desk.
GFN isn't entirely flawless, however. Running at this topped out setting, I have experienced the occasional stutter—and not of the traditional kind. While the ping reliably remains in the 21-24 ms range, and the frame rate has been free to soar off into the low 300s with 4x MFG enabled, the streaming delivery itself does occasionally glitch out for a second or so.
I first noticed it happening mid-game, but it's since been something I've been able to replicate somewhat reliably by pausing the game for 30 seconds, then jumping back into the action. It's an odd sort of glitch too, where it pauses on a frame, warps for a second in a way that makes me feel like someone's put something in my coffee, then carries on seamlessly like nothing ever happened.
The streaming delivery itself does occasionally glitch out for a second or so
All told, over multiple hours of testing, I've probably had this glitch occur less than 10 times, and that's including trying out my forced method. Still, it suggests that 120 fps 4K streaming is still something of a work in progress, not that we should really be surprised. It's a huge amount of data to be streamed at such a rate, and even with some AI-enhanced help, expecting a completely flawless experience is probably a bit much at this point.
And then there's the image quality. Here's an interesting effect—for most of my swapping back and forth, I struggled to tell the visual difference between the streamed version, and the game running on my rig. Right until I got to some brightly coloured sections, where… actually, it's easier if I just show you:
Above: Local RTX 5080 on the left, GeForce Now Ultimate on the right.
The GFN version here looks… bluer. More blue. Blue+. Personally, I kinda like the look, and I only noticed it when I put two screenshots side by side, as per above. After a head-scratching session with some other members of the hardware team, we figured this might be down to the colour quality not being set correctly—but changing it between 10-bit YUV 4:4:4 and the other colour settings still resulted in the same deep blue effect in this particular scene.
If I was to hazard a guess, I think it might be down to whatever AI-magic Nvidia is using in the video compression not entirely picking up the fog/haze at the same settings, making the image on the right appear more, err, blue. Which, in turn, indicates video compression is having an effect on the visuals to some degree.
But, I'd argue, not necessarily where it matters. Sure, if you pixel hunt you can find the odd difference, and side by side screenshot analysis of very brightly-lit areas can show a noticeable colour change—which could also be magnified by the difference between Nvidia's screenshot capture built into GeForce Now, and the screenshot capture of the local Nvidia overlay.
Any visual softness under fast motion is something that I've found myself having to look out for, rather than noticing all the time.
But with the bullets flying past your overly-muscled shoulders and the demon gore splattering in the breeze, it's difficult to tell which is which mid-game. I have noticed that the GFN version occasionally looks slightly softer around the edges in motion, before instantly crisping up as soon as you stop moving.
The effect is very slight, to the point where I really have to pay attention to notice it happening, but it's just about there. Still, the streamed image quality is very impressive nonetheless, and any visual softness under fast motion is something that I've found myself having to look out for, rather than noticing all the time.
I'm a real stickler for image quality, too, and have been known to abandon a game if a graphical artifact continually takes me out of the experience. Here? I'd happily play through the rest of Doom: TDA at these settings, and if you knew what a fusspot I was in real life, you'd know that means a lot.
Admittedly, though, Doom: The Dark Ages isn't going to reveal input lag issues the same way a multiplayer shooter would, so I've also tested out my failing reflexes in the Apex Legends shooting range, which resulted in this:
Yes, I know, my aim could do with some work. The game itself responds snappily, though, even if the ageing tendons behind it don't. I did try a few matches as well, but quickly became overwhelmed with the blinding lights and zoomer humour and had to be taken off for a nice cup of tea and an afternoon nap.
For the purpose of this test period Nvidia has enabled a limited suite of 20 games to try out with the new RTX 5080-equipped mode, which means I've been denied the glory of watching myself die once more in the jungles of Gray Zone Warfare, which is much more my speed.
Still, the input latency feels near-as-makes-no-difference quick to me, and certainly good enough for a multiplayer match or two. Switching back to my actual RTX 5080 rig in between rounds certainly hasn't boosted my performance, but then I'm not sure much would at this point. What's more important to me is the feel, and whether I can tell the difference between whether I'm streaming, or running the game locally. And, I'll be honest, in everything I've tested so far, the two are remarkably close. Eerily so, in fact.
Which has made me wonder about the future of PC gaming as a whole. Yes, I've experienced the odd glitch, and yes, you can sometimes tell the difference in image quality. GFN still isn't a perfect solution, and I would still say a powerful gaming PC still provides a better experience overall.
But that is absolutely to be expected. It's also worth pointing out the machine currently humming away next to my chair as I type is worth several thousand dollars. The GeForce Now Ultimate tier is currently $20 a month.
GFN feels remarkably like a solution that might undercut our beloved home PCs in the years to come.
And while part of me really, really wants to reject the idea of moving my gaming to the ever-ephemeral cloud on principle alone, I have to admit the experience of using GFN for gaming has been an eye-opening one, to the point where I think I'd be happy to recommend it to someone looking to play highly demanding games, without an uber-expensive mega PC.
Long term, I'll be interested to see if my 4K 60 fps hitching issues persist, or whether it's simply a bug to be ironed out over time. But for now, I think I have to live with the idea that, for the most part, I can no longer reliably tell whether a game I'm playing is being streamed, or running next to me—and that GFN feels remarkably like a solution that might undercut our beloved home PCs in the years to come.
Perhaps I should be pleased about that, given it might bring more PC gamers, of a sort, into the fold. Our hobby is often criticised for being prohibitively expensive when it comes to the hardware requirements, and rightly so. Could GeForce Now be the eventual solution that makes owning a power-hungry, silly-expensive gaming PC feel, well, old-fashioned?
From my testing, I think it's already well on its way. Anyone looking for a cloud streaming writer? Nope, I thought not. Shame.
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