GeForce Now gets major upgrade in South Africa

Nvidia GeForce Now in South Africa recently received an upgrade, allowing subscribers on its higher-end plan to play games with a much more powerful graphics card.

GeForce Now is a paid cloud game streaming service that lets subscribers with a fast Internet connection stream and play games using dedicated hardware in a data centre.

The platform supports over 2,000 titles, including graphically demanding games, on a wide range of devices that wouldn’t be able to run them otherwise, such as smartphones, tablets, TVs, and computers.

In South Africa, the service is offered through mobile network operator Rain, which manages the data centre infrastructure, subscriptions, and customer support.

A MyBroadband reader subscribed to the service’s Ultra plan recently posted screenshots showing they were playing on a machine with a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.

The previous card used for this tier was the RTX 3080. While capable of streaming some games at 4K and 120 frames per second, it has been showing its age.

The RTX 3080 was released in 2020, so it was already three years old when GeForce Now went live in South Africa.

The RTX 4080 was launched in late 2022 and is around 30% to 50% more powerful than its predecessor.

It benefits greatly from the third iteration of Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling AI upscaling tech, allowing for high framerates at 4K resolutions.

While Rain’s new GeForce Now systems feature an upgraded GPU, it has retained the 16-core AMD Threadripper Pro 3955WX CPU from the previous rigs.

Contacted for comment, Rain confirmed the upgrade to the RTX 4080 and said the service would now support gaming up to 4K resolution and 240 frames per second.

Rain also said that both Performance and Ultra subscribers will have access to the new GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards.

Its entry-level GeForce Now plan costs R200 per month and previously provided access to a system with an RTX 3060 that supports gaming at 1440p and 60 frames per second.

The Ultra plan is priced at R400 and offered up to 4K gaming at 120 frames per second. As these differences no longer apply, it is unclear what the benefit of using the more expensive option will be.

Packed to the rafters

Unfortunately, there is bad news for many people who eagerly want to try out the service — the upgrade will not add extra playing slots.

GeForce Now has operated at full capacity in South Africa since shortly after its launch in December 2023, with Rain’s website consistently showing subscriptions as sold out.

Although Rain lets interested users put their names on a waiting list to be notified when new slots open up, many have been waiting for over a year without any feedback on new slot availability.

Some have alleged the waiting list may not be a first-come, first-served affair. “I’ve had my friends get priority slots quicker than some people who have been waiting on this forum since beta,” a user said.

That has led to allegations that Rain may be giving its own active customers preference on the waiting list. Rain has not addressed these claims in response to questions from MyBroadband.

In February 2025, it said it was “working with Nvidia to accelerate the installation of new GeForce Now GPUs” and would open up more slots soon.

On the positive side, Rain seemed to be managing user numbers on the service very well, whereas active subscribers in other countries have complained about waiting in long queues for their turn to play.

MyBroadband tested the service during its beta and was impressed with the high frame rates and low input lag, which we found nearly indistinguishable from playing a game from local hardware.

While users still need to own the games or have access to them through a subscription service like Game Pass, GeForce Now is a good solution for those who cannot afford high-end hardware.