NVIDIA GeForce NOW Gets Blackwell Upgrade: RTX 5080 Power and Cinematic Quality Streaming

At Gamescom 2025, NVIDIA unveiled what it calls the biggest leap forward for its cloud gaming service, GeForce NOW. The upgrade is powered by the new Blackwell architecture, bringing RTX 5080-class GPUs and AMD Zen 5 CPUs to the Ultimate tier.

This new hardware setup pushes out 62 teraflops of compute power, a 48GB frame buffer, and up to 2.8x performance boosts compared to last gen, thanks to DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation.

But raw power isn’t the only highlight. NVIDIA also introduced Cinematic Quality Streaming (CQS), designed to tackle one of cloud gaming’s biggest drawbacks: image compression. With YUV 4:4:4 chroma sampling, 10-bit HDR, AV1 support with Reference Picture Resampling, AI-driven sharpness filters, and DPI awareness, games look cleaner, sharper, and truer to native resolution. In a side-by-side demo with Black Myth: Wukong, the difference was striking – textures like foliage and hair were far less muddy when CQS was switched on.

And NVIDIA didn’t stop there. It put its upgraded service head-to-head with Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro using Cyberpunk 2077. While PS5 Pro capped ray tracing at 40FPS, GeForce NOW streamed the PC version with path tracing at 4K/120FPS. Simply put, the cloud service flexed hardware three times more powerful than Sony’s latest console.

Latency, the Achilles heel of cloud gaming, is also getting serious treatment. Beyond Reflex, servers now use Rivermax packet pacing for direct GPU data transfers, cutting CPU load and lag. NVIDIA is also pushing ISPs to adopt the new L4S protocol for even lower latency, with early support from Comcast, T-Mobile, and BT Group. Still, gamers may need new routers to take advantage of it.

On the client side, NVIDIA is boosting support across devices: 90FPS on Steam Deck, 120FPS on Lenovo Legion Go S, 4K/120FPS on LG TVs, and even 360FPS streaming at 1080p for competitive shooters, with end-to-end latency dropping below 30ms. Racing wheels and thousands of Steam games are joining the platform with a new Install-to-Play feature, and for a limited time, Fortnite can even be streamed directly through Discord.

GeForce NOW already leads the cloud gaming space, but this massive Blackwell-fueled upgrade pushes it closer than ever to the feel of local play. The rollout begins next month with 20 supported games, with more joining rapidly.