NVIDIA makes huge updates at Gamescom 2025

GeForce NOW is taking the next step with how they provide games for their streaming service.  They’ve been providing cloud-based gaming on just about any device, bringing thousands of games to gamers everywhere . Today they’re upgrading that to Blackwell RTX – the largest upgrade since that platform’s launch.  More than just a move to RTX 5080 performance, team green had a whole lot to share for gamescom. Let’s get into the massive list of upgrades coming your way momentarily.  

It’s not a surprise that the GeForce NOW system is getting a shot in the arm – that’s been happening for the last few generations.  What’s different this time around is the frankly eye-widening amount of new features that are coming to the network.  NVIDIA has their ear to the ground, listening to user feedback and they’ve addressed things like shimmering upsampled objects, blurry textures, and even color depth, despite this being an entirely streaming platform.  Let’s go over the hardware improvements first.

The GeForce NOW system is effectively a virtual machine running in the cloud, which is to say, running in a data center closest to the person streaming it.  The first upgrade, obviously, is that the core of that platform will see an upgrade to a new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 with all the power and performance that implies.  This is being accomplished with new custom Blackwell GPUs called the “RTX SuperPod Network” - an AI-powered dynamic next-generation device.  In addition, the GPU will be joined by a new high-powered Ryzen 9800X3D processor, an 8-core, 16-thread processor from AMD.  Combined, it represents the largest upgrade for Geforce NOW in over a decade – a 2.8X uplift to performance!  That’s 62 TFLOPS of power – triple the power of a PlayStation 5 Pro.  

You won’t necessarily need it (though in some cases, you’ll see smoother frame times and other benefits over native), but this move to the 50 Series GPU also brings features like DLSS 4 and Multi-Frame Generation.  The team has also worked to address the shimmering issue that can occur with DLSS, as well as upgrading the color depth and encoding.  That’s YUV 4:4:4 Chroma (full color precision with sharper text and no color bleed), HDR10 and SDR10 (richer and deeper colors, contrast, and smoother color gradients), AVI1+ and RPR (smoother resolution shifts and more stable streaming / frame timing), and even 100+ MB/s streaming capabilities.  Amazingly, all of these things are coming to devices like the Steam Deck and LG TVs natively!  Ultimately, it’s all about the frames though, which the team showcased with Doom: The Dark Ages at 175FPS, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at 180FPS, Dune Imperium at nearly 250FPS, Cyberpunk 2077 at 175FPS, and Flight Simulator 2024 at almost 200FPS, all at 4K resolution, max settings and details, and with DLSS 4 enabled.   

NVIDIA is also announcing that their “install to play” library is about to reach 5000 titles, allowing subscribers to install their game into high-speed NVMe storage for local-like performance that persists.  That means your games load faster, storage of mods or whatever else stay locked in, and naturally preserving your save games.  Premium members will get 100GB of single-session storage, though I suspect that might expand over time given how bloated games like Call of Duty have gotten these days.  

Beyond their own work, NVIDIA is also partnering up with local ISPs to bring “Low Latency Streaming”.  While Reflex in the Cloud was already handling a lot of heavy lifting to combat latency over the Internet, local ISPs are doing something that I never expected – enabling L4S.  L4S, or Low Latency, Low Loss, is local-prioritization at the ISP level.  That’s Comcast, T-Mobile, BT Group, British Telecomm, and more giving gamers a clear path optimized for cloud gaming.  I can’t overstate how floored I am to see that come together, and I’m eager to see how much of a real-world difference it will make.

The team at NVIDIA also had a few hardware announcements to showcase.  First, they’re expanding their already-established support for Lenovo and GFN on mobile gaming, pushing up to 90fps on devices like the Steam Deck, and 120 FPS on Lenovo Legion Go S. Additionally, they’re adding 4K/120 with HDR for a number of new LG displays, with 5K/120 on some of their OLED models. Adding to that, they’re also now supporting racing wheels from Logitech, complete with haptic support – get ready to race! 

Hardware aside, it’s all about the games.  By the time you read this, RTX-powered games with DLSS 4 support is now wired up on over 175 games, with 90% of users with 50 Series devices using the tech.  That makes it the fastest adopted gaming technology in all of NVIDIA’s history, with new games like Phantom Blade 0, Pramata, Resident Evil Requiem, Borderlands 4, Cronos: The New Dawn, Directive 8020, Dying Light The Beast, Cinder City (previously Project LL), Fate Trigger, Hell is Us, Honeycomb, The Outer Worlds 2 and more joining the roster this year and next, just to name a few.  

There’s one game getting an update almost immediately – Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.  The title already looked fantastic, but NVIDIA is introducing something they’re calling RTX Hair this September.  Using 3X less data versus individual strands, the new tech (exclusive to the Blackwell architecture) utilizes LSS or Linear Shaped Spheres to improve hair, the way it lays and interacts with the body, and how full it is.  Lighting penetrates more realistically, it’s more full, light and shadow looks more lifelike, and all while taking less processing power than any previous method.  We have come a long way from the rudimentary days of Hairworks, that’s for sure.  

In a surprise, the team also gave us our first look at The Oversight Bureau from Iconic Interactive.  This game utilizes NVIDIA’s ACE system to bring the entirely-voice-driven simulation to life. In this Portal-esque Orwellian dark comedy story you’re trapped in an underground facility where you’re being reprogrammed to “be a more compliant employee”.  This game is driven by the power of your voice, where the AI model understands the text and then replies with the best pre-recorded dialogue that makes the most sense as a reply to your statement.  It’s all locally run, with no connectivity required, and playable on the floor at gamescom.  

Speaking of AI assistance, there are some upgrades coming to Project G-Assist.  First, it’ll now run on any NVIDIA GPU with 6GB of RAM, meaning it’ll run locally on a laptop.  It’s also getting a bevy of new functionality that can help you tackle otherwise complex or error-prone tasks.  As an example, you can tell it to optimize your laptop for the best possible performance while on a battery, then have it graph your GPU voltage against your framerate, kicking the results into an exportable format.  This would normally be a complex task but can now be done quickly and in a repeatable fashion.  You’ll also be able to use plugins to further expand these tasks.

Rounding out the big announcements, NVIDIA was happy to report that their app is also getting a big shot in the arm.  Items that were either unexposed or locked behind the legacy control panel are now coming to the app natively.  Things like Ansitropic Filtering, Fast Approximate Antialiasing (FXAA), Multi-frame sampled AA (MFAA), Texture Filtering anisotropic sample optimization, Negative LOD bias, Texture Filtering Quality options, and Trilienar Optimization are just a portion of the list, but that’s not the biggest thing.  Now you’ll be able to enable any or all of these things on a global basis, including DLSS overrides, and you won’t have to do so on a per-game basis.  Better still, they won’t evaporate on your next reboot, and you’ll find it all within the easier-to-use interface.  

All of these advancements are coming your way almost immediately, with the same great tiers and at the same pricing, but all-new functionality.  Best of all, you don’t have to take any of my word for it – the free ad-supported tier gives you up to 1080p/60 for up to 1 hour of gameplay before needing to pop out of the queue for another session, with only a 2 minute average wait for that next run.  Performance and Ultimate have a variety of feature sets, and you’ll be able to see those capabilities below to see which one fits your needs. 

Let us know in the comments - have you ever tried gaming streamed from the GeForce NOW platform?  What has been your experience, and was it close to the desktop experience you expected?  What games have you played?