The gaming PC days are NUMBERED! (Sponsored)

[Neftex]

alienating your user base just for shitty sponsored video, cant say i expect more from you nowadays

 

 

[Guest]

Mainstream will be mainstream, followers of the herd, nothing wrong with mainstream though they tend to show tendencies to make life more difficult or expensive to non-mainstreamers ( which ofcourse in the case of the hazardous or damaging non mainstream crowd is more then granted **? wHere is that cocaine caterpillar?? ":{{}\! .... or with the way games are developing now p.c. wise I see no real future in investing in any new games at all 

 

[Palden]

I think there's an even bigger issue that I forsee as someone who works for a large ISP, and that is that as more streaming services congest ISP networks, it causes an issue for everyone using the ISP local node. Some arguements I've heard is that ISPs should just "make networks handle more data", but that's simply not possible at most residential nodes where there's not enough room in the equipment cabinets you see on the side of the road to add in more DSLAMs or transport equipment, but alsi that the ISP hardware vendors can't innovate network solutions fast enough to keep up. So what this leads to is a severe shortage of network resources when services like this become more widely used. Even 5G will have an issue whenever it's deployed due to the fact that while the speed between the customer and the node increases, that doesn't mean that the speed between the node and the local service router that transmits traffic to the actual internet routing servers does too, and that's going to be the long term issue with high-bitrate services like these

[Franck]

23 hours ago, HimymCZe said:

agree to disagree...
this is NOT going to happen by multiple factors, like:
how you wanna pull HDMI quality (18Gbps) thru AT&T/Verizon infrastructure?
why x265 when you are forced to send 60+ I-frames only anyway?

how is it better/acceptable to watch 60 wash-out JPG over crystal clear RAW render?
anyone wanna bet that gaming PC+streaming PC rent will EVER get cheaper than just owning one anyway?
so they run a server; that runs VM; that runs on VM; that runs denuvo VMprotect; that is on VM... clever...

---

This project is already dead as every predecessor. ..., but if we are lucky, in few years time, we'll get a linux open-source code for screen-streaming over your home network.

TICO can be used to encode 4K at 60fps with a delay of about 1 frame with lossless compression that is viable with much lower bandwidth requirement. There was a nice paper on that by Intel on in conjunction with Intel not so long ago.

 

The thing is obviously you don't go for the best case options when you deal with such a large project. You want something working at acceptable performance. After they can start breaking their heads on the compression types and the best options.

[gregp203]

I signed up and payed for a subscription about 3 and a half hours ago.

When I try to log in with their client on PC or android I get "Your Shadow is not activated yet" . I have successful verified my email address with them. I have contacted support and received automated emails verifying my request with broken links in it. I replied to the emails , but got no response. Has anyone else had the same experience? How long does it take to get a "Shadow" to activate? or for someone to respond? what good is IaaS or PaaS if the "S" doesnt work

[Tristerin]

The way of the PC?  Psshhhaawwww the pr0n industry dictates everything you kids, you didn't grow up through the era of Media being controlled by that industry!  Unless pr0n agrees, we will always have a PC

[Razor512]

Cloud gaming will not work under current technology. Even if in the same room as the server, a thin client adds latency, and unless you have a 10 gigabit connection, you also give up some quality.

 

Remember, when gaming locally, you are getting no additional latency and uncompressed video from the GPU. To fully match the quality you are looking at over 3TB per hour of data used just for the video alone.

 

In the video, the latency test seems unrealistic, especially considering that most gaming PCs will not have such a high latency through the entire input and render pipeline.

 

Another thing to consider, is the price, it is $24.50 per month, you are already at the price of getting your own GTX 1080, and since they are using high core count xeon CPUs, you are likely only getting access to 4 hyperthreaded cores on a xeon CPU. That means less CPU performance than even the current gen core i7 mobile CPUs, and lower than performance than even most 4th gen core i7 desktop CPUs (likely core i7 3gen but without the meltdown patch performance hit).

 

Your CPU performance will also be slower depending on activity of other VM clients since memory bandwidth is shared, and xeon clock speed scaling heavily dependent on the workload of other cores. All someone would need to do is have their VM run an AVX workload and instantly cut everyone else's performance by 20%+, or do a RAM throughput intensive workload and harm the performance of other VMs.

 

12GB of RAM is also not enough for many high end games, especially some large sandbox style ones, e.g., ARK survival evolved, Space engineers, and even rather dated looking ones such as 7 days to die, and most other lesser optimized or early access games.

 

 

Since most people do not need to upgrade every year, it is cheaper in the long run to just build a decent gaming PC, and if you really need, use the steam or nvidia shield steaming which can work over the LAN for PC, Mac, Android, and possibly iOS, and remotely via a VPN (works decently for games that are not latency sensitive).

 

Since you are getting access to a dedicated GPU, don't expect them to upgrade to the latest GPU every year, and if they simply go ~1.3 years without upgrading, you paid more on the subscription than you would have paid upgrading your own PC to handle the games.

 

--------------------------

 

Beyond the above, there is also the issue of internet connections.

Most internet connections (especially in the US), are not consistent, (even verizon fios fails to maintain consistent ping times), it will be hard to get a consistent experience, and unless they introduce a buffer and more latency, you can get consistency issues that will feel worse than having inconsistent frame times.

Beyond that, Most of the US is held under the tyranny of ISPs such as comcast which have insane data caps, inconsistent speed, and engage in throttling, even during the net neutrality days they used a loophole to continue to throttle things like torrents and streaming by using the exemptions for throttling when needed to maintain the network during congestion, thus since they over sell their service anyway, it is always congested, thus legally allowed to throttle all year round.

 

[G1K777]

If you make a console that handles a game like Crysis 3 at 4K with 90FPS in VR... PCs might die... it doesn't look like consoles will become that fast. I wish this would happen, I'm sick of building PCs and building and building. Buy, power on... and play at Ultra settings. I wish they would make computers like consoles that would be even cheaper.

[leo1798]

6 hours ago, Deusrex said:

Okay, I agree that gigabit connect nationally would be required (1024 Mb up and down) 10 gigabit nationally seems like a pretty excessive goal to stream video.

For a single user this may be the case, but when you consider that many households have several people accessing an internet connection at one time, this argument falls apart. Sure, there's probably enough bandwidth on a gigabit connection to use a cloud gaming service while someone else browses the internet or something, but when you have multiple people using this service, someone streaming 4k (or 8k depending on future adoption), and someone downloading a program of some sort, you're going to quickly exceed your bandwidth. Hence why a 10 gigabit, or at least a 2.5 gigiabit connection would be optimal to have widespread if this service is ever to catch on.

[Giganthrax]

I can see this service being popular with the rich(ish) people who don't really care about money and have no problem subscribing to it just for the convenience of being able to play anywhere on any device with no hassle.

 

Otherwise, the $35 monthly fee seems really high. That's $420 a year + you'd also need to pay for fast internet. You can buy a brand new Ryzen APU system with that money, or get a console. 

 

I can see the game streaming service becoming the norm if they can make it work for like 10$ a month, but at this price, people would have to be crazy to use it instead of getting a cheap pc/console. 

[corrado33]

3 hours ago, Neftex said:

alienating your user base just for shitty sponsored video, cant say i expect more from you nowadays

 

 

Oh by god that was SUCH a better video. 

 

A comparison of multiple services, image quality, input lag (which was ~100 ms for each service, compared to ~25 on a local computer). 

 

Wow.... this is the video LTT SHOULD have produced. 

 

Just.... wow.

[corrado33]

2 hours ago, G1K777 said:

If you make a console that handles a game like Crysis 3 at 4K with 90FPS in VR... PCs might die... it doesn't look like consoles will become that fast. I wish this would happen, I'm sick of building PCs and building and building. Buy, power on... and play at Ultra settings. I wish they would make computers like consoles that would be even cheaper.

Hahaha.... go back to consoles. 

 

You realize that consoles are just mini PCs running a proprietary version of linux.... right? Consoles will NEVER be more powerful than PCs. 

[corrado33]

3 hours ago, gregp203 said:

I signed up and payed for a subscription about 3 and a half hours ago.

When I try to log in with their client on PC or android I get "Your Shadow is not activated yet" . I have successful verified my email address with them. I have contacted support and received automated emails verifying my request with broken links in it. I replied to the emails , but got no response. Has anyone else had the same experience? How long does it take to get a "Shadow" to activate? or for someone to respond? what good is IaaS or PaaS if the "S" doesnt work

Online videos say it can take up to 5 days to activate. But it's usually around 12 hours. 

[AndrewCC]

The main problem is not latency, that is a distant second behind the video quality you get. It's like playing games on a Twitch stream. The compression artifacts are horrible. A PS4 Pro or X.B.O.X. give vastly better visuals and cost less even if you have to replace the machine completely EVERY YEAR.

There is no way this will catch on with the mainstream unless every single game publisher joins a videogame cartel and makes all games exclusive to cloud computing as the ultimate DRM.

[Catsrules]

Isn't $25 or even $35 a month actually really good for a semi-dedicated cloud computer with a video card? I think a somewhat compatible computer is like .50-.75 per hour on other services.  This is $35 a month for 24/7 access correct? Why couldn't I just game on it a few hours a day and leave it mining crypto currencies the rest of the time? I never really got into crypto mining and with it comming crashing down I don't know if I would break even but that would certainly cut down my monthly cost.

[DaiGurenMK42]

Why is there no dislike button on here? corrado33 just isn't being reasonable with their opinions. Just enjoy the cool tech.

[Razor512]

1 minute ago, Catsrules said:

Isn't $25 or even $35 a month actually really good for a semi-dedicated cloud computer with a video card? I think a somewhat compatible computer is like .50-.75 per hour on other services.  This is $35 a month for 24/7 access correct? Why couldn't I just game on it a few hours a day and leave it mining crypto currencies the rest of the time? I never really go into crypto mining and with it comming crashing down I don't know if I would break even but that would certainly cut down my monthly cost.

 

Their terms of use seems to be against tasks like that.

[Catsrules]

4 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

 

Their terms of use seems to be against tasks like that.

Ahh darn it they thought of that already. Well it was a happy thought of mine before it got shot down.

[corrado33]

41 minutes ago, DaiGurenMK42 said:

Why is there no dislike button on here? corrado33 just isn't being reasonable with their opinions. Just enjoy the cool tech.

I'm sorry you cannot see the reason behind my well thought out arguments. 

 

It's not cool tech. it's a way to take advantage of people who cannot afford to build their own PC. Like payday loans. 

 

Not to mention the actual service sucks. Watch the video I posted and tell me if you'd want to play on it. 

[Razor512]

From a value standpoint, it it s pretty bad deal for gaming, consider how often people actually needed to upgrade.

 

It is a better value than nvidia shield and other services that charge you for each 30 minutes of gaming, but in the long run, it is more expensive than just building or upgrading to a gaming PC.

 

For example, if you purchased a GTX 1080 within the first few months of release (before the mining craze), compared to the game streaming service, you would have spent more on the streaming service than you did on the card. And based on video reviews, they do not update the hardware every year, and the CPUs can be multiple years old. You are essentially getting 3rd generation core i7 (without the meltdown performance hit) performance, and a 2+ year old GPU. If you plan to stream games for multiple years, then you will pay more.

 

Since they are using a SAN and VMs are dynamically allocated to systems, the hardware changes each time you launch the VM. Thus they can oversell the service based on how many active clients are on average. Overall, the hardware likely pays for itself for the company within a month of use for the company.

 

 

-------------

 

Another thing to consider, is that there is more value to having a gaming PC, as it doesn't just mean better local gaming performance, it also means a faster experience on virtually every task that makes use of the CPU, RAM, or GPU. Where with a streaming service, if using a low end system to stream, then you only get better performance for a single task, at a cost that is higher long term compared to upgrading your PC.

 

For example, how much longer do you think the GTX 1080 will be useful for gaming for (keep in mind the 1080 came out early 2016), continued use after 2 years, means the cost of the card is less than the cost of the streaming service; and you don't have to deal with the latency and overly compressed video.

 

[corrado33]

15 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

From a value standpoint, it it s pretty bad deal for gaming, consider how often people actually needed to upgrade.

-snip-

 

For example, how much longer do you think the GTX 1080 will be useful for gaming for (keep in mind the 1080 came out early 2016), continued use after 2 years, means the cost of the card is less than the cost of the streaming service; and you don't have to deal with the latency and overly compressed video.

 

Exactly. The 1080 (a two year old card, almost 3) will certainly be a viable card for the next 3-5 years. I mean hell, people are still gaming on 780s and 960s. 960s were released ~5 years ago (considering we're almost in the new year) and 980s were released 4 years ago and can still play almost every game at 1080p on ultra. 

 

I think right now, GPUs have a usable lifespan of ~6-8 years. Then, sell if for $100 (because for some reason GPUs, even super old ones, seem to always sell for $80-$100, no matter how shitty they are), and buy a new card. You'd be so far ahead. 

[SLCH]

13 hours ago, Neftex said:

alienating your user base just for shitty sponsored video, cant say i expect more from you nowadays

 

 

From it found server locations of shadow service.

Look at https://status.shadow.tech/

 

So ping any datacenter from these regions to get the idea of latency for you.

DigitalOcean for example http://speedtest-ams2.digitalocean.com/ 

Result wont be 100% accurate but close enough.

[SLCH]

Cloud gaming is fine.

If you put your cloud server in your closet 

[SolarNova]

Ill never swap over to a cloud solution.

 

I hate giving up control of somthing i pay for, relying on others to keep a service running. There will ALWAYS be outages or lowered performance at times.

Your effectivly turning your gaming experience into a utilities service, akin to Internet, Water, Heating, Electricity. All of which are controleldd by someone else and all of which can suffer issues regardless.

 

The more personal controll you have, the better.

 

So no, ill be staying with a local machine.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Catsrules said:

Isn't $25 or even $35 a month actually really good for a semi-dedicated cloud computer with a video card? I think a somewhat compatible computer is like .50-.75 per hour on other services.  This is $35 a month for 24/7 access correct? Why couldn't I just game on it a few hours a day and leave it mining crypto currencies the rest of the time? I never really got into crypto mining and with it comming crashing down I don't know if I would break even but that would certainly cut down my monthly cost.

Cryptominers will get a harder and harder life if the current situation continues …. First the technology needs to improve to provide a cheap reliable service that is not an insult to the current ecology standards half the world tries to reach... Here in the Netherlands we are looking at a fairly high increase in electricity costs for the next year so we can reach the numbers agreed by in the Kyoto accord... Ofcourse this applies to the game streams too.... a 50 or a 60, nvidia wise should be enough for anyone to enjoy streaming gaming at home... 1080's and other so called developers/ business hardware should be strictly for the designated users... ofcourse there will be always the so called harcore segment which kids tend to drool about but … let them pay...