John VoorheesFeb 22, 2023

At WWDC last year, Apple began promoting Macs to developers as a premium videogame platform, showing off 3 titles, only one of which has shipped.

In the meantime, streaming games has become an increasingly viable way to enjoy AAA titles on the Mac.

In fact, NVIDIA's GeForce NOW Ultimate tier, that streams games running on the RTX 4080 GPU is currently the best way to enjoy the most demanding games on any Mac.

My story on @macstories: https://www.macstories.net/stories/the-best-mac-gaming-experience-is-a-pc-sitting-in-a-dallas-data-center/

The Best Mac Gaming Experience Is a PC Sitting in a Dallas Data Center

I’ve seen the future of Mac gaming, and it’s not Metal 3 or Apple silicon. It’s a PC sitting in a Dallas data center with an NVIDIA 4080 GPU. That’s the data center my Mac connects to when I log into GeForce NOW Ultimate, the top tier of NVIDIA’s videogame streaming service. NVIDIA has data

Show threadPaul Stockton
@johnvoorhees @macstories not finished your article yet but if I play mainly first-person shooters where your reaction time and latency has to be as fast as possibly in order to kill the enemy before they kill you, how does this work playing it "remotely"?
Wonder if anyone has done any comprehensive tests frame-by-frame to show what each player sees and reacts to compared to a gaming PC
Feb 22, 2023 at 3:18pmWeb
Show threadJohn VoorheesFeb 22, 2023

@pauls I'm probably not the best person to answer this since I don't play a lot of FPS games, but here's what NVIDIA said at CES:

“With the addition of NVIDIA Reflex, GeForce NOW achieves click-to-pixel latency below 40 milliseconds — another first in cloud gaming.”

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-brings-rtx-4080-to-geforce-now

NVIDIA Brings RTX 4080 to GeForce NOW

NVIDIA today announced GeForce NOW™ is going beyond fast, delivering GeForce RTX™ 4080-class gaming to billions of devices — available exclusively in the new, high-performance Ultimate membership tier.

NVIDIA Newsroom
Show threadPaul StocktonFeb 22, 2023
@johnvoorhees thanks for that - I may need to try this for a month in the interests of science to compare to my 2080Ti gaming PC
Show threadMatt BirchlerFeb 22, 2023
@pauls @johnvoorhees I would also check out Digital Foundry's looks into this over the past year or two. The short version, I believe is that in optimum conditions the latency can be shockingly close, but it's not as consistent as running things locally.
Show threadJohn VoorheesFeb 22, 2023
@matt @pauls Very true. I haven’t see, any latency issues, but I’ve been playing more forgiving games when it comes to that. The biggest factor I’ve seen so far is the consistency of your Internet connection. A slower wired connection is much better than a fast WiFi connection that dips in and out.
Show threadPaul StocktonFeb 22, 2023
@johnvoorhees @matt thanks guys - very interesting, I'm going to keep a close eye on it, plus the list of games. A 4080 graphics card is way out of my budget for a long time so if ever I have a game that my 2080Ti can't handle at 1440p then this seems the way to go
Show threadohhaivinnyFeb 22, 2023
@johnvoorhees @pauls Thank you! I mostly just play rocket league, so might be worth the trial.
Show threadPaul StocktonFeb 23, 2023
@ohhaivinny @johnvoorhees what are you playing Rocket League on at present? Just asking as that game runs very well even on low spec gaming PC’s so playing a game that needs split second reflexes is likely to put you at a disadvantage if streaming it instead.
Show threadohhaivinnyFeb 23, 2023
@pauls @johnvoorhees Yeah I have it running on 10th Gen i5 with 3070. The other game I play is Cities Skyline, which I am sure the remote setup would easily work. But the gaming PC still exists under my desk
Show threadPaul StocktonFeb 23, 2023
@ohhaivinny @johnvoorhees interested to hear how Rocket League plays, you’ve got a better gen gfx card than my PC and I can play in 4K 100+ fps easily.
Show threadohhaivinnyFeb 23, 2023
@pauls @johnvoorhees I have no issues now, but if I don’t have to have physical hardware might be interesting
Show threadohhaivinnyMar 5, 2023
@pauls @johnvoorhees I got some surprising findings!! Rocket league is very much playable, but I couldn’t get any of the mods in Cities Skylines to work which is weird.
I have symmetric gigabit and live in SF if that helps
Show threadPaul StocktonMar 5, 2023
@ohhaivinny did you enjoy Rocket League as much like this?
Show threadohhaivinnyMar 5, 2023
@pauls yeah no noticeable difference really, between local and GeForce Now
Show threadalansFeb 22, 2023
@pauls @johnvoorhees @macstories My experience playing Destiny on a MacBook via GeForce Now is that it's probably not quite responsive enough for *competetive* PVP, but fine for casual PVP game modes; and easily good enough for harder, high-level PVE things like GM nightfalls and raids.
Show threadPaul StocktonFeb 22, 2023
@alans that's fair enough and what I'd expect. While I'm not a pro or competitive player I need my gaming PC to ensure I've got the best latency possible otherwise I'd be getting killed first every time!