While it is possible to upgrade specific components to extend a gaming PC’s lifespan and play more demanding titles as they release, this can be expensive, especially when upgrading costly components like the graphics card, CPU, or motherboard.<\/p>\n
This cost could be avoided on Nvidia’s GeForce Now service, with the company updating its streaming rigs as it launches new products.<\/p>\n
For example, the Nvidia GeForce Now Ultimate subscription was previously called “GeForce NOW RTX 3080”.<\/p>\n
However, when the manufacturer released its 40-series GPUs \u2014 including the powerful GeForce RTX 4080 \u2014 the name changed to “Ultimate”. Nvidia upgraded the GPU offering for the plan to the RTX 4080 without implementing a price increase.<\/p>\n
“Priority members have access to Premium rigs up to GeForce NOW RTX 3060- or RTX 2080-equivalent GPU servers. GeForce NOW Ultimate members have exclusive access to RTX 4080 gaming rigs,” Nvidia says on its FAQ page<\/a><\/strong> for GeForce Now.<\/p>\n Rain launched its Nvidia GeForce Now beta<\/a><\/strong> in late September 2023, allowing those who received an invitation to test it and provide feedback.<\/p>\n The beta closed<\/a><\/strong> on Monday, 4 December 2023, with Rain telling customers to look out for an official launch announcement in the near future.<\/p>\n South African pricing isn’t currently available as the service hasn’t officially launched. Therefore, the subscription fees we used for our calculations are converted from US dollar prices.<\/p>\n US subscribers pay $9.99 (R188) per month for Nvidia GeForce Now Priority and $19.99 (R376) for the Ultimate plan.<\/p>\n This works out to R11,280 over five years and R18,048 over eight years for the Priority plan.<\/p>\n Nvidia GeForce Now Ultimate subscribers will pay R22,560 if they use the service for five years and R36,096 if they subscribe for eight years.<\/p>\n In comparison, our Priority-equivalent rig worked out to R18,785 \u2014 R7,505 more than paying for the service for five years and R737 more if the subscription remains active for eight years.<\/p>\n The Ultimate-equivalent rig, which includes an RTX 4080 GPU, worked out to R47,744.<\/p>\n Therefore, paying for Nvidia GeForce Now Ultimate for five or eight years will save you R25,184 or R11,678, respectively.<\/p>\n More details on each of our theoretical builds are provided below.<\/p>\n We built two separate theoretical rigs \u2014 one that is Priority-equivalent and a second that matches what’s offered with the Ultimate plan \u2014 for our comparison.<\/p>\n The first, Priority-equivalent, rig features an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 X, MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12GB, and 16GB of DDR4 memory.<\/p>\n The build comes in at R18,785 \u2014 around R700 more than it would cost to pay for Nvidia’s GeForce Now Priority plan for eight years.<\/p>\n The second rig features an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition 16GB, and 32GB of DDR4 memory.<\/p>\n Most of the other components remained unchanged, excluding the power supply.<\/p>\n The Nvidia GeForce Now Ultimate equivalent rig totals R47,744, with the primary contributor to the significantly higher price being the R32,279 graphics card.<\/p>\n The components used for each build, with prices, are summarised in the table below. We didn’t include the cost of a monitor or other peripherals.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Gaming-PC-vs-GeForce-Now_FINAL.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe builds<\/h2>\n