Felt like you were missing out on the Geforce Now beta because you don’t have a Mac? It’s now available to Windows PC users, too.
I’ve been playing PUBG on a 2011 MacBook Air recently. No, really, I actually have. Not my first choice, I’ll admit, but it’s the easiest way to play duos with Mrs B when we don’t have a second gaming machine in the house; she takes the gaming rig on the big TV, and I play on the little screen.
This is done via Nvidia’s Geforce Now gaming service, which allows you to stream games in your Steam library from Nvidia’s high-end graphics cards in their high-end data centres.
It’s been in beta for a few months now, on Mac OS X, and it largely works quite well. There are few queues, crashes and drop-outs from time to time – and a few PUBG-specific issues, like how it always turns foliage and shadows up to full when you start a new session – but honestly? It’s a pretty good compromise, particularly if you can’t afford or don’t have access to a high-end gaming PC.
And now Nvidia have extended the Geforce Now beta to Windows PCs, meaning anyone can now have a crack at playing top-end games on low-end hardware. Well, nearly everyone – sorry, Linux and Chromebook users, it’s not your turn yet.
The system requirements are largely the same as the Mac version. The key thing you’ll need is a good internet connection – 50Mbps recommended, 25Mbps minimum – and either wired ethernet or 5GHz wireless connectivity to it.
As for the PC? You can use Geforce Now on pretty much any old potato:
- Intel i3 with 3.1GHz or faster CPU
- 4GB of system memory
- GPU that at least supports DirectX 9
- NVIDIA GeForce 600 series or newer
- AMD Radeon HD 3000 series or newer
- Intel HD Graphics 2000 series or newer
And that’s it. Head on over to the beta site to signup, for either PC or Mac.
