[U] Nvidia GeForce NOW just added an ‘Ultimate’ tier with better features and no additional cost

Update January 4, 2023, at 2:12 PM EST – Clearly, I forgot that the Ultimate tier was already available, and the update bumps its specs significantly instead of introducing it as a new option. Sorry about that! I’ll endeavor to use Nvidia more in the future. Again, since I came from Stadia, I haven’t invested much in GeForce NOW, but doing so will only help my ability to write reliably for you all. Thank you for your understanding and more importantly, for pointing out the error!

Cloud gaming with Nvidia GeForce NOW is going “beyond fast” in the company’s latest blog post detailing its upgraded high-performance tier. You may already be familiar with two of the options on offer for the gaming service which include a free plan and a $9.99 USD per month “Priority” upgrade.

For free, you receive basic access to your games, will likely have to wait in a queue to access them and you can only play for one hour at a time before being booted and having to reload your session. If you’re a paying “Priority” member, you get RTX, 6-hour sessions, 1080p resolution 60 FPS, and immediate access to launch a game.

Now, the “Ultimate” tier is being introduced, which offers an RTX 3080 rig with RTX, 120 FPS, 4K resolution, and an 8-hour session length. The servers are also faster than those found in Priority. Most notably, this is being upgraded later this month to an RTX 4080 Rig with 240 FPS for $19.99 USD per month.

Outlined in said blog post is something called SuperPOD:

NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD^™ is an AI data center infrastructure platform that enables IT to deliver performance—without compromise—for every user and workload. DGX SuperPOD offers leadership-class accelerated infrastructure and agile, scalable performance for the most challenging AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, with industry-proven results.

Infographic via Nvidia

I’ve still yet to recover from my cloud gaming experience with Google Stadia and it’s not even fully shut down yet. I think I’m too scarred to work with another similar service and pay money, but the good thing about Nvidia GeForce NOW is that you’re not directly buying the games from them. Instead, you simply add games you already own on Steam and Epic Games to your library and pay for cloud access to them. Let me know in the comments if you’re currently paying and if you’ll be upgrading to the new Ultimate tier once it’s fully rolled out.