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Nvidia’s GeForce Now Has One Frustrating Problem
The pursuit of graphics at any cost
The components inside my increasingly grungy PC are about to celebrate their fifth birthday. While it seemed like a good idea to go all-in on AMD when I bought it, Nvidia’s absurd level of market share and impressive collection of proprietary graphics technologies have both made my machine age faster than milk when it comes to playing the newest games.
Earlier this year I caved and started paying for the Ultimate tier GeForce Now subscription even though I have some personal qualms about supporting Nvidia’s weirdly unregulated monopoly. As streaming services go, it’s the best choice in a field of mostly janky options. The visual quality, low lag, and support for features like high frame rate monitors and HDR output make the other choices out there seem ridiculous. The gameplay latency lives up to their marketing hype, and if you run games at or above 60FPS, it more or less feels like they’re running locally.
Unfortunately, in their relentless quest to provide implausibly good graphics and gameplay over a video stream, Nvidia kind of forgot about one important thing: sound quality. This issue might not stick out to you right away, depending on how audio-obsessed you are and which particular title you’re playing. But after a few months with the service…
