NVIDIA introduces GRID - Might be the end of consoles!

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SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
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Pauly, This announcement does nothing to further PC development and the fact that nvidia is embracing something that should be the bane to every hardware tweaker on the planet, is worrisome. Even some of the biggest nvidia fans on other boards don't like this at all, and for good reason.

It's a different market than the market for the hardware enthusiast. It's about generating revenue, imho.
 

Jionix

Senior member
Jan 12, 2011
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Maybe someone should tell Nvidia that the major ISPs are clamping down on data usage and data speeds in general are stagnating. Also, net neutrality is dead?

I would imagine cloud gaming takes up quite a bit of up and down stream data..
 

tviceman

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2008
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Understandable, but have you been on public WiFis? Just curious, as someone who travels a lot these are a few things I learned:
Hotel "free" WiFi is worse than DSL tier 1, I'm talking 20-30KBs downloads, and 300+ latency, probably due to congestation and freeloaders.

The only place I enjoyed decent WiFi was the airport.

I had a HDTV at the hotel I stayed in when I went to NC. My 4G was faster than the hotel's free WiFi. It also had lower latency. I did my WoW dailies with 400+MS over 4G versus the 800+ MS from the hotel (EDIT: This was probably about peak time too, 7:30PM).

Don't get me wrong, I'd support a service like this (see my first post in this thread) I just don't our infastructure is there yet. Not even close.

Agreed, which is why I also said:
It's a neat concept that can coexist along side and compliment the services, habits, and luxuries we already enjoy.

with the emphasis on coexist.
 

SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
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No offense, but that isn't a very compeling list. Epic is probably the only real healthy dev outside of CDProject (who still really only have one strong IP.)

And this really didn't address my question, not that I expected you to have "the" answer, more or so, with devs recently fighting publishers (and indirectly consumers) on what they claim is being short-changed, I'd really be interested to see how streaming technology benefits the devs.

I wonder if the streaming provider pays a flat out rate...I remember when Netflix first started, the studios thought it would fail and asked for pennies in royalties, then bam when it became a boom the studios wanted cajillions more which sort of screwed Netflix.

It has the potential to raise revenues for developers and technology companies and bring additional consumers to PC gaming that may not of. This isn't a replacement for anything to me; it's about having more options and flexibility of choice for the consumer.
 

railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
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with the emphasis on coexist.

Agree, when our infastructure get's to that point. Currently, it just doesn't seem very feasible.

Got to start some where though.

It has the potential to raise revenues for developers and technology companies and bring additional consumers to PC gaming that may not of. This isn't a replacement for anything to me; it's about having more options and flexibility of choice for the consumer.

Do you think this will work with our current stock of games or we'll have to pay a sub (or even a new license) to play games through this method?

I'm against having to double dip.
 

blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
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I assume he means the US where 10-100Mbit internet is just used by a minority, thats a premium service which very few opt for. Most people don't buy anything more than 1-3Mbit which is worthless for any type of streaming. You can't even stream a 720p youtube at 3Mbit without issues, I don't believe. Of course, maybe this could be useful for tablets with wifi....public wifi in my area certainly isn't 10Mbits strong but maybe it is in some areas.

edit: It should should also be mentioned that the US is one of the only countries in the world without bandwidth caps. This is not the case in most other countries, so that makes it even more nonviable for other EU countries in particular. I really think this was a bad move by NV, I mean, the mere mention of cloud gaming to most hardcore PC gamers doesn't bring good thoughts.
 
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Atreidin

Senior member
Mar 31, 2011
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I think Nvidia has really found a winner here, assuming what they were looking for was a great way to throw away big piles of money.
 

zephyrprime

Diamond Member
Feb 18, 2001
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There is one situation where latency could be less than traditional gaming and that's with multiplayer online games. Even though local render pipelines have low latency, having to communicate telemetry with the server with current online games introduces it's own additional network latency. Cloud gaming would centralize this communication more.
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
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I think NV would really be onto something here if they implemented this in driver and allowed users to pipe graphics through their LAN. It'd be awesome if I could have one 2K computer with all sorts of graphics muscle and everything, then pipe the awesomeness through my home network so that I can play on my crappy 3yr. old $500 laptop in the backyard, or on my phone while I'm on the porcelain throne.

Hook up a $100 dollar media streamer to my TV and play my games with almost no additional lag (thanks to everything being close and over the home network) without having to spend all kinds of money on additional boxes.

If you have an office with a bunch of people using Solidworks or autocad, they can all pipe in from dumb terminals. That kind of thing...

This whole over the internet thing is a bunch of hot air.
 

blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
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Uh, thats not the plan at all, godisanatheist (wtf is up with your name??) The plan is to allow content providers to use kepler GPU's to stream cloud gaming over their network. At least, that was the takeaway I had from watching their presentation on content and delivery partners.

So expect Onlive and other companies to steam using Kepler GPU's.
 
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Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
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I think Nvidia has really found a winner here, assuming what they were looking for was a great way to throw away big piles of money.

^

This will go the way of gpu physx and that other silly thing they tried that I've forgotten for the moment.

Give them credit for always trying something new, but cloud gaming is a pile of fail.

This will appeal to the angry birds gamers, maybe. :D
 

Absolution75

Senior member
Dec 3, 2007
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yea ~140 vs 150 wow lol.. imo its a big fail, give use GK110 in geforce already..

But from what i've seen it won't be until q4 2012.

lol @ marketing chart

beyond the networking getting faster...

100 ms latency on the graphics pipeline would be 10 fps on a console

most console games run way faster than that
 

dagamer34

Platinum Member
Aug 15, 2005
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I'm all for new technologies, and especially those that require me to carry less electronics, but I'm having a real hard time believe this image:

05.jpg


Are they trying to tell me that this technology has LESS latency than a console + TV setup?

...

Is that even possible?

It's certainly possible if the GPU is designed to use the dedicated transcode hardware to pipeline framebuffer data into the encoder before spitting it out over the Internet.

Though I should note that when I watched the live stream, they stated that you needed to be in the same metro area practically to get these kinds of latencies. But, I could see a gamer with a high end rig and a good broadband connection setup their own cloud service wherever they are if you live in a place that this cloud service doesn't yet exist in.
 

tviceman

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2008
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Latency is more important than speed. You only need about 3-4Mbps to get a high quality 720p stream, but if there's a delay of 1s, gaming on it would be super annoying.

I would hope that Google's Gigabit fiber network will improve/reduce latency on top of the massive speed improvements. It would be a step backwards, IMO, to have increased latency with the ultra high speeds they will be offering.
 

Absolution75

Senior member
Dec 3, 2007
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I don't see how cloud gaming can really take off. There would need be be a datacenter outside of every town to receive good enough latency. Even if you could directly connect every computer in the world with its own dedicated fibre connection, you can't decrease latency further due to the whole universal speed limit which is light.

These two fundamental and logistical problems are unlikely to be solved.
 

Lonbjerg

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2009
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People thinking 150ms lag makes gaming impossible, might wanna read this:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-lag-factor-article

People really overestimate consoles.
I myself cannot stand to game on these crapboxes...but a lot of people seem to enjoy it.

Like I said...this will not be a "desired" feature for PC gamers.
But it target the casual gamers.
The same group that consoles targets.

Food for thought.
 

DigDog

Lifer
Jun 3, 2011
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if i had 150ms latency when playing quakelive, i'd quit playing.

29ms ping + 5ms input lag + 2ms mouse lag = is plenty, thank you.
 

Lonbjerg

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2009
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if i had 150ms latency when playing quakelive, i'd quit playing.

29ms ping + 5ms input lag + 2ms mouse lag = is plenty, thank you.

So would I.
But consoleplayers don't seem to mind.

But nice cheerypicking the quake series...with it twich-shooter-roots and all...a PC game ;)
 

blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
8,548
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Just curious, why do you have the notion that console players are casual, consoles have a more "hardcore gamer" audience than PC's.

I get the point though - this could be cool for tablet gaming...maybe...
 
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