GeForce Now’s RTX 5080 upgrade could bring me back to cloud gaming
Clearer visuals and faster networking should feel just like playing on your PC
If you tried cloud gaming once back in the early days of the tech and decided it wasn’t for you, Nvidia’s latest GeForce Now upgrade could bring you back into the fold. The GPU giant will be upgrading its Ultimate tier hardware with RTX 5080 power, bringing graphical goodies like DLSS 4 and better ray tracing pretty much anywhere with an internet connection.
Each of the Ultimate-grade GeForce Now SuperPods hanging out at Nvidia’s data centres will soon be swapped for ones seriously more oomph, meaning you’ll effectively be gaming on an 8-core Ryzen CPU and with double the system memory as the previous-gen setup.
The generational step up from 4080-era silicon to a Blackwell 5080 is bringing HDR10 and 4:4:4 Chroma colour, which should make visuals that bit crisper and more detailed than the outgoing GeForce Now gear. You’ll also be able to play at much higher resolutions and refresh rates – without the wallet-busting outlay of having to buy a graphics card yourself.
With a compatible monitor or TV, you’ll be able to stream games at 5K/120p. And if your screen doesn’t have quite so many pixels, don’t worry: 1080p content can now top out at 360Hz, for esports-grade responsiveness. With new support for Low Latency, Low Loss (L4S) networks, Nvidia reckons the end-to-end latency when playing Overwatch 2 is actually lower than playing locally on a PlayStation 5 Pro – though whether your internet provider also supports them is a bit of a crapshoot right now.
LG’s 2025 and 2026 TVs and monitors will be first in line for 4K/120Hz with HDR and 5K/120Hz gameplay respectively. The Lenovo Legion Go S is also getting 120fps streaming support, while Valve’s Steam Deck OLED will be able to hit 90fps as long as you’ve got a good enough broadband connection.
The Xbox Cloud Gaming rival has a bunch of big-name titles due in the coming months, with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Borderlands 4, Hell is Us, The Outer Worlds 2 and Dying Light: The Beast all down to appear on the service on day one.
It’ll also finally fully support racing wheels, including haptic feedback, so aspiring sim racers can put their cash towards upgrading their rig rather than their graphics cards.
The good news is that pricing is staying the same. GeForce Now Ultimate will still set you back $20/£20/€22 per month once the 5080 upgrade rolls out.
Tom Morgan-Freelander
Deputy Editor 
