Nvidia's GeForce Now services to get RTX 3080 Tier

According to The Verge, Nvidia is adding a new RTX 3080 tier to its GeForce Now game streaming service, which will give subscribers access to "the most powerful gaming supercomputer ever built." By the end of the year, the new tier should be up and running, with Founders and Priority subscribers getting first access to the 3080 option.

The 3080 services will be more expensive than the existing $10 per month Priority tier, with a six-month membership costing $99.99, or around $17 per month. The new tier will provide performance that isn't currently available in other game streaming services, as well as a significant reduction in latency, according to Nvidia.

The RTX 3080 service will not use RTX 3080 graphics cards; instead, data centres will use chips with comparable performance that were designed to fit into a server. On PC and Mac, the new tier will allow for streaming at up to 1440p at 120fps. A 4K 60fps option is also available, but it will initially be limited to Nvidia's first-party Shield TV device due to the fact that not all streaming devices support h.265 decoding. However, it appears that Nvidia intends to expand 4K options to other devices in the future.

According to Nvidia's marketing, the RTX 3080 cloud option offers a "giant performance upgrade," with a performance boost of 70 times that of the average Steam user's laptop and seven times that of the average Steam desktop.

Nvidia also hopes that the new hardware will reduce latency, thanks to its Adaptive-Sync technology. When running Destiny 2 at 120 frames per second on the 3080 cloud tier, the company claims there are only 56 milliseconds of latency, compared to 93 milliseconds on an Xbox Series X running the same game at 60 frames per second.

Of course, those figures are usually based on the best-case scenario, with latency also being influenced by your location in relation to Nvidia's data centres. The company is opening four new data centres, one in Singapore, two in Australia, and one in Brazil. Nvidia is also bringing Adaptive-Sync to all GeForce Now tiers, so even if you don't upgrade, you should notice a reduction in latency.

On the Shield TV, players will need a minimum download speed of 35Mbps to play at 1440p 120fps, and a minimum download speed of 40Mbps to play in 4K.