BennyK491

This one is absolutely brutal for me. I switched from an HD 7950 to a GTX 780 back in the day to use my Shield portable, and have been firmly within the NVidia ecosystem ever since. I've had the K2 tablet, the OG shield, the Shield pro, and have never considered even switching to an AMD card specifically because of Gamestream. It's the primary way I play non-FPS games, and if it is actually dead for real I am going to be so bitterly disappointed. Steam link has been an absolute garbage alternative for me when compared to Gamestream/Moonlight. I'll certainly be voting with my wallet when it comes time to make my next upgrade.

This one is absolutely brutal for me. I switched from an HD 7950 to a GTX 780 back in the day to use my Shield portable, and have been firmly within the NVidia ecosystem ever since. I've had the K2 tablet, the OG shield, the Shield pro, and have never considered even switching to an AMD card specifically because of Gamestream. It's the primary way I play non-FPS games, and if it is actually dead for real I am going to be so bitterly disappointed. Steam link has been an absolute garbage alternative for me when compared to Gamestream/Moonlight. I'll certainly be voting with my wallet when it comes time to make my next upgrade.

Summary
Nvidia is removing GameStream from their SHIELD devices in February 2023. They are recommending users to transition to Steam Link instead.
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
This is going to be a big annoyance to a many people that bought the Shield TV for both content consumption and gaming. Steam Link is good, but is not as good as GameStream, with in my experience higher latency and worse frametimes.  The release from Nvidia only mentions the update is pushed to Shield devices, but that's not a good solution to miss out on other updates.
 
The alternative is using Moonlight: https://moonlight-stream.org/
and if Nvidia eventually kills off GameStream via GeForce Experience, then there is also Sunshine: https://github.com/lizardbyte/sunshine
 
I don't like how Nvidia is killing off features while they are still selling Shields. It's not like the device is EOL I cannot fathom that GameStream is costing them a lot to maintain. Relying on the community or other companies to deliver on product features feels really scummy.
 
Sources
https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5436/~/gamestream-end-of-service-notification
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-kills-off-gamestream-feature-on-shield-devices

I'd really like to see a video comparing hardware encoding performance across different codecs and different GPUs, with quality comparisons.
 
I don't know of anything out this like there right now.
 
To better understand, I'm a Linux user, that has a Windows computer in his basement. I've been using Moonlight with GameStream (which nvidia just announced their deprecating). I worked pretty hard to find the right answer for this problem back in the day when I was trying different cloud based game streaming solutions (e.g., Moonlight, Parsec, Rainway, Steam, etc).
 
It's admittedly a niche, but "create your own cloud gaming rig (in the cloud)" and "create your own cloud gaming rig (using your own hardware)" seems like a video that the LTT audience would find interesting and unique. I really like how you guys do thought provoking projects like this -- and I suspect Linus has done some of this for himself because he's got a setup where he too has closet Windows gaming rigs that he streams to different computers.
 
So yeah, a comparison video (especially with the new Nvidia and AMD hardware would be really interesting to answer the questions:
- What's the best software?
- What's the best codec for latency? Quality? For AMD? For Nvidia?
- Who has the better encoder, nvidia or AMD? i.e. is one just SO MUCH better for all codecs?
- Is there much of a difference between say a 3080 and a 4080 when it comes to encoding latency and quality? AMD 6000 vs 7000?
- What about decoders? Is the decoder in an integrated GPU as fast as the decoder in a dedicated GPU? For Nvidia? For AMD?
- Is there a major difference between different ethernet cards? Who does the best low latency? Is it worth using a PCI-e networking card over your motherboard?
- How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?
- Who is today's sponsor?
 
Please, for the love of god, help me answer these questions.

Hey, I have a friend in the exact same boat as you, so I am super interested in hearing what people have to recommend. Will follow this thread closely.