The biggest upgrade: NVIDIA GeForce NOW received RTX 5080, streaming improvements, and any games from Steam

According to NVIDIA, Blackwell’s RTX 5080 chips will improve GeForce NOW’s user experience by almost three times. The service will also receive improved broadcast quality and other benefits.

NVIDIA has announced the “biggest ever” update to its GeForce NOW cloud gaming service. Starting in September, servers will switch from Ada Lovelace to Blackwell GPUs, offering RTX 5080 performance with the Ultimate tariff without increasing its cost.

The new SuperPod network will be powered by dedicated GPUs with 48GB of video memory and combined with AMD Ryzen Zen 5 8-core CPUs, which are approximately 30% more powerful than previous Zen 3-based chips. NVIDIA claims that this upgrade delivers up to 2.8 times the performance of the existing RTX 4080 Ultimate tier and 3 times the TFLOPs of the PlayStation 5 Pro.

Programmatic improvements

The main software innovation will be the new Cinema Quality Streaming (CQS) mode, which should improve the image on users’ screens. The new features include clearer text in YUV 4:4:4 mode, HDR10 support, AI video filters, AV1 streaming with smoother resolution scaling, and ultra-sharp quality at 100 Mbps.

NVIDIA is also introducing Low Latency Streaming (LLS), which integrates Reflex and Rivermax technologies, along with new partnerships with ISPs to support L4S mode to reduce latency in games. In particular, when playing Overwatch 2 in 360 Hz mode, the delay will be only 30 ms.

NVIDIA RTX 5080 is coming to Steam Deck

Usage GeForce NOW on Steam Deck OLED now supports streaming from 90 FPS, and on Lenovo Legion Go S — up to 120 FPS. In particular, this means the arrival of DLSS 4 frame generation on Steam Deck and a significant acceleration of games. Supported LG TVs will be able to play streaming images at resolutions up to 4K 120Hz, or even 5K 120Hz (on OLED displays). NVIDIA is also adding support for steering wheel controllers, making cloud-based racing simulations more convenient.

Games from Steam on NVIDIA GeForce NOW

Service will get more AAA games, in particular Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Borderlands 4, Dying Light: The Beast and The Outer Worlds 2. The new Install-to-Play feature will expand the library to more than 4,500 games, allowing NVIDIA to process and stream Steam games directly and with persistent storage, saving installs and data between sessions. The game will be available for quick download and installation on the GeForce Now server, just as it would be on a local computer. Temporary storage will be available for free, but permanent storage will cost extra money. This seems to mean that you will need to pay to avoid reinstalling the game every time.