There are a lot of cool ways to take your games on the go these days. Mobile controllers let you use the device in your pocket. Steam Decks and other handheld PCs give you portable gaming with a nostalgic feel, and Smart TVs and Streaming sticks even have apps for it now. While that's all well and good, any enthusiast will feel the lack of power these devices have compared to their at-home rigs.
NVIDIA's GeForce NOW subscription service could help you wave goodbye to that compromise. To get you up to speed, GeForce NOW is NVIDIA's cloud streaming subscription service that harnesses the power of its hardware into the cloud, so you can have the benefits of its infamous Ray Tracing and DLSS technologies, coupled with the incredible Ada Lovelace architecture while you're away from your setup. In other words, you could be on the couch, playing games on a Smart TV one minute, head upstairs for some time with your gaming PC, or on a train the next. All the while, your gaming experience will be seamless across your devices.
While GeForce NOW has the cloud streaming abilities to make competitor services shed a tear, its biggest strength might be that it connects all of your gaming libraries together into one, beautiful, shiny collection. Over 1,800 games and apps are supported by the service across Steam, EPIC Games, Ubisoft's Uplay, the Xbox Game Store, EA, and GOG.com are available on it. Essentially, you're covered for just about any storefront you usually play games from.
Before we get into the specifics of how this all works, it's worth noting that thanks to a summer sale, you can save 50% on GeForce NOW subscriptions at the moment. Both one-month and 6-month deals will only cost you half the price right now, and that offer is active until August 18th.
So how does it work? How can you play on an Android device or iPhone and have either perform like an RTX 4080 gaming PC? GeForce NOW's processing all happens on NVIDIA's side of the equation, meaning that so long as you have the required internet connection, the stream coming to you doesn't depend on the power of your devices.
Perhaps most impressive, is the list of devices you can use GeForce NOW on. Laptops, Chromebooks, and desktop PCs work - so if you're on entry-level hardware, you could end up with better performance from paying the monthly subscription regardless of the GPU you've paid for. However, TVs, Android devices, iPhones, Steam Decks, and even the Xbox Series X are compatible too.
Of course, with any subscription service, there are a few different monthly fees that will determine how much you can get from it. As mentioned, you can get the equivalent performance of an RTX 4080 by paying for the top tier, named Ultimate. This costs £9.99 a month right now, down from £19.99 per month. The Priority tier gets you performance up to 1080p at 60fps with no adverts and costs you £4.99 right now (down from £9.99).
If you aren't convinced by cloud streaming, there is a free tier you can try out. You will be limited to ads and 1-hour sessions, but it might be the thing that sells you on how seamless NVIDIA's cloud power can be.
Both of those paid tiers get you access to the brand's signature gaming technology that's propelled it to GPU market dominance in recent years. DLSS 3 upscales your games and uses AI to generate new frames, unlocking smoother gameplay. If you don't want to commit to buying an entire PC setup, this GeForce NOW summer discount might be the best way to try it all out. Even Ray Reconstruction is available, and that uses deep learning to improve the looks of Ray Traced lighting scenes in games.
If you're investing in gaming on the go for commutes, GeForce NOW might be the perfect companion for you. Vacations away from home or even a boost to your at-home gaming performance are all possible here. GeForce NOW gets you access to all your games on a wide variety of devices and it doesn't even demand installations or updates.
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