I tested GeForce Now in South Africa with a potato PC — and it was awesome

Nvidia’s GeForce Now service is a game-changer for those with a machine that struggles to play popular games, like my potato PC.

I am an avid online gamer, particularly regarding first-person shooters like Overwatch 2, Fortnite (don’t judge), and Apex Legends (to a lesser extent).

My machine struggles to run these games even at the lowest graphics settings.

For reference, my 2018 MacBook Pro runs Windows 10 on a Bootcamp partition. The laptop features 16GB of RAM, an Intel Core i7-7700HQ, and an AMD Radeon Pro 555 GPU with 2GB of VRAM.

While the term “potato PC” may seem slightly unfair, it is very accurate when it comes to gaming capabilities.

Although games are playable on the laptop, it doesn’t allow for a great experience, with poor frame rates on low graphics settings and scaled-down rendering.

Even with these settings, I still frequently face stutters and pixelation. Then, I was invited to join Rain’s Nvidia GeForce Now beta.

Previously, I would often experience significant stuttering and pixelation while in the lobby screen and on Fortnite’s Spawn Island

Fortnite’s Spawn Island

I was sceptical at first as I noticed severe input delay during a quick test of the service. However, this was caused by an unstable Internet connection.

I was also initially concerned that there would be severe lag in-game. However, this was not the case. After tweaking some settings — and my Internet stabilising — the experience was game-changing.

My gameplay experience went from juddery graphics that sometimes peaked at 50 frames per second to a steady 100–120 frames per second in Fortnite and Apex Legends, with minimal latency and no noticeable input delay.

It should be noted that my monitor maxes out at 75Hz, and I don’t get the full benefit of the 100–120 frames per second.

However, even the jump from 50 frames per second to my monitor’s maximum of 75 frames per second made a huge difference.

I didn’t realise what I was missing while playing on my laptop’s hardware. Performance improved significantly, and the games were running at far higher graphical fidelity.

While I could still enjoy games on my laptop despite the low frame rates and rendering, it was nothing compared to my experience using GeForce Now from Rain.

Frames periodically dropped below 100 frames per second while in-game. However, this didn’t happen often and was barely noticeable when it did.

Regarding latency, both Fortnite and Apex Legends ran at pings of between 160 and 180 milliseconds — much like I see when running the titles natively on my machine.

The real test will come when I can launch Activision Blizzard titles on the Nvidia GeForce Now, with my game of choice being Overwatch 2.

I have fiddled with the settings extensively on my machine to the point where I get 65 to 75 frames per second on low graphics settings with the render scale at 75% at 1080p resolution.

While this makes the game smooth and clear enough to play, it isn’t an exciting experience and pixelation from the scaled-down resolution produces a slightly blurred image.

Assuming Nvidia GeForce Now gets support for Activision Blizzard titles, including Overwatch 2, and produces a similar experience to Fortnite and Apex Legends, I wouldn’t look back.

Rain brings Nvidia GeForce Now to South Africa

Rain announced the official launch of Nvidia’s GeForce Now service in South Africa in early December 2023 after beta-testing the service between 29 September and 4 December 2023.

GeForce Now is the first cloud gaming service to officially launch in the country, allowing subscribers to play the latest gaming titles without requiring a high-end gaming PC.

The service is available on Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS smartphones, smart TVs, and certified Android TV boxes.

Rain offers two subscriptions to the cloud gaming service, with pricing starting at R200 a month for the Priority tier.

The Priority subscription limits gaming sessions to 3 hours and lets users benefit from Nvidia’s RTX ray tracing technology for supported games.

It lets subscribers play games at a maximum 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second via a dedicated gaming server with an RTX 3060 graphics card.

For R400 per month, you can subscribe to the Ultra plan, which allows eight-hour gaming sessions and gives users access to GeForce RTX 3080 servers.

The Ultra plan enables gameplay at up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second or 1440p resolution at 120 frames per second.