Nvidia has a limited-time summer sale going on for its GeForce Now cloud gaming service. The sale sees prices of all its paid membership subscriptions cut in half, making it the perfect time to try out Nvidia's cloud gaming service.
GeForce Now's Priority membership and Ultimate membership have been discounted by 50% for the summer sale. That brings the Priority membership's pricing from $9.99 a month to just $4.99 a month. The 6-month Priority membership sees the same discount, going from $49.99 down to just $24.99 for six-months' worth of playtime. The Ultimate membership, Nvidia's highest end offering, has been discounted from $19.99 down to $9.99 a month, and for the 6-month plan a discount from $99.99 to $49.99.
Nvidia's membership sale only applies to its membership plans. If you were hoping to get a 50% discount on Nvidia's day passes, you are out of luck. The Priority Day pass is still going for $3.99, and the Ultimate Day pass costs $7.99. These 24-hour passes are decent if you want access to Nvidia's cloud servers temporarily, but if you plan on using GeForce Now for even just two days, buying the 1-month Priority or Ultimate memberships at their respective 50% discounts right now is the cheaper option.
The Priority plan is perhaps the best way to take advantage of Nvidia's cloud service. The mid-tier plan offers ray tracing capabilities roughly equivalent to an RTX 3080, there are no ads and it supports 6-hour session times at up to 1080p resolution and frame rates up to 60 FPS. If you want all the bells and whistles, Nvidia's Ultimate plan provides several big improvements, including 8-hour session lengths, 4K resolution support via an approximate RTX 4080 cloud equivalent, and up to 240 FPS framerates. Of course there's also a free tier, ad-supported, which you can try in a pinch. That's limited to 1-hour sessions and gives you 720p60 with approximately an RTX 2060, but without ray tracing support.
The hardware requirements for GeForce Now are quite low. All you need to run GeForce Now is a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or MacOS version 10.11 or higher. On the Windows side, you'll need a 2GHz dual core, 4GB of memory, and a DX11-capable GPU/integrated graphics. On the Mac side, you'll need a Mac system made in 2009 or later. Chromebooks, Android devices, iPhones/iPads, handheld devices, smart TVs, and browsers are also supported.
While the hardware requirements are quite lax, the internet requirements are more demanding. For basic 720p60 playback you'll need at least 15 Mbps of download speed, 25Mbps for 1080p60, 35 Mbps for 1440p120, and 45Mbps for 4K120. For an optimal experience you'll also want 80 ms or lower network latency from Nvidia's cloud servers. Wi-Fi users will also want to use a router with at least a 5GHz connection.
