Starfield on GeForce Now: A Cloud Gaming Experience Like No Other

Are you ready to take your gaming to the next level? If your answer is yes, then you might want to consider Starfield on Nvidia's GeForce Now. It's a cloud gaming service that provides an RTX 4080-level GPU experience, making it a viable option for those not ready to upgrade their own PCs. This is the first game that's genuinely compelling me to explore this possibility.

The Starfield Experience on GeForce Now

Upon launching Starfield on GeForce Now, the first thing I noticed was the remarkable improvement in graphics and gameplay compared to my older 1440p desktop. The game looks stunningly beautiful and runs smoothly, much to my delight. However, it's worth noting that it's not a perfect solution. Even with my high-speed wired gigabit fiber optic internet and close proximity to Nvidia's West Coast servers, the game still doesn't run as fluidly as it would on top-notch gaming PCs.

Performance Highlights

In the city of New Atlantis, I experienced occasional frame drops down to 47 and 48fps, regardless of the graphics settings or resolution. This is primarily due to the fact that the game's performance in certain worlds is inherently limited by your CPU speeds. On the other hand, while navigating the cyberpunk heart of Neon, I consistently maintained a minimum of 60fps at 4K resolution and Ultra spec, even during intense battles. This performance was noticeably better than what I could achieve on my 5600X / 3060 Ti desktop machine.

The Ultimate GeForce Now Experience

One of the best features of GeForce Now is its ability to stream to virtually any system you have. It's truly an eye-opening experience seeing Starfield run on a diverse range of devices. However, it's important to note that unless you're willing to invest some money into the service, you may not be able to fully enjoy what I've described here.

The Free Tier: A Cautionary Tale

Curious to see how the free tier of GeForce Now would fare, I gave it a try - and was disappointed. A frustratingly long wait time of nearly half an hour for the game to load, sync my cloud saves, and compile its shaders was followed by subpar graphics and occasional error messages. It's a stark reminder that in the world of cloud gaming, you often get what you pay for.

Final Thoughts

Despite the drawbacks, if you have a good internet connection and are willing to pay for the Ultimate tier, GeForce Now offers a unique and engaging gaming experience. Just remember to manually set your GeForce Now resolution to 4K, even if your monitor only supports 1440p. The streaming quality is noticeably better with a higher render resolution, as I experienced significant improvements in graphics at 4K compared to 1440p.