Nvidia Intentionally Capping Frame Rates for Priority Users on GeForce Now; Read More

GeForce Now, Nvidia's game streaming service, has been detected reducing frame rates for priority tier customers. NVIDIA appears to be capping framerates much below 60 FPS in select titles, according to paid GeForce Now subscribers, a claim that NVIDIA later verified as factual.

A Reddit member decided to ask Nvidia what was up after seeing their Guardians of the Galaxy session was limited to a hard 50 frames per second via the in-game settings. NVIDIA's decision to limit framerates in certain AAA games too much below 60 frames per second raises questions about how it promotes GeForce Now. Priority tier users have a connection that supports "up to 1080p at 60 FPS," according to NVIDIA's tier comparison. It appears that "up to" relates to both resolution and framerate for NVIDIA.

NVIDIA argues that framerate limitation is in place because certain games do not "perform well enough" to stream at 60 frames per second, according to a customer service blog post. This statement raises eyebrows because Priority tier members get access to the GRID RTX 10 8, which is the cloud GPU comparable to the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. On a physical GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, none of the games mentioned by NVIDIA run at less than 60 frames per second at 1080p, with some like Dying Light easily delivering twice that.

It's known as Nvidia's Optimal Playable Settings or OPS. According to Nvidia's new help page detailing the purposeful action, it's essentially a frame rate cap. Most games should allow members of GeForce Now's two paid tiers, Priority and RTX 3080, to modify this. However, due to performance concerns, a number of new games described in the paper have been restricted to Priority tier users.

Nvidia has released a comprehensive list of GeForce Now titles with frame rate limitations for Priority users. According to Nvidia, the premium computers used by Priority members were unable to maintain a continuous 60 frames per second in certain titles.

The list released by Nvidia:

Game

OPS

Date added

Dauntless

55 FPS

Jan 2020

Immortals Fenyx Rising

48 FPS

November 2020

Cyberpunk 2077

45 FPS

December 2020

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

45 FPS

December 2020

Jurassic World Evolution

50 FPS

February 2021

Dyson Sphere Program

50 FPS

February 2021

Valheim

50 FPS

February 2021

Path of Exile

50 FPS

March 2021

Outriders

55 FPS

March 2021

Kenshi

50 FPS

May 2021

Biomutant

50 FPS

May 2021

Dying Light

50 FPS

June 2021

The $50 per month NVIDIA Priority tier promises gaming performance comparable to that of a premium gaming setup, priority access to gaming servers, up to six hours of gaming at a time, and, most crucially, up to 1080p gaming at 60 frames per second. However, it appears that not all of the 1,100 supported games can achieve this level of performance, despite the fact that Nvidia makes no mention of this on the membership page.

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