Nvidia Shield does not support GeForce Now's upgraded game streaming

06 Jan 2023 | Rasmus Larsen |

Nvidia is firing on all cylinders with its GeForce Now game streaming service while the Shield box is getting long in the tooth.

Shield was positioned as the flagship device for GeForce Now game streaming, but that is no longer the case. Shield has not been upgraded since 2019 and the chip inside is largely similar to the one in the original Shield from 2015. It is long overdue for a major hardware upgrade.

Nvidia has announced that GeForce Now will soon have support for 4K120 game streaming as part of an upgraded Ultimate subscription plan that runs on servers powered by RTX 4080 graphics cards. However, all Shield TV boxes are limited to 4K60 output over HDMI 2.0.

- "GeForce Now Ultimate members are set to receive three major streaming upgrades. The new SuperPODs are capable of rendering and streaming at up to 240 fps," announced Nvidia at CES 2023. "4K gaming goes from fast to beyond fast with an upgrade from 60 fps to 120 fps, while ultrawide monitors will be supported for the first time, at up to 3,840 x 1,600 resolution, including many popular variants such as 3440 x 1440 and 2560 x 1080."

The company claims that click-to-pixel latency is below 40 milliseconds for 240fps which is supported on PCs – the fastest in cloud gaming.

To be fair, Smart TVs do not support GeForce Now game streaming beyond 4K60 either. 4K60 was exclusive to Shield in 2021 and throughout 2022 but newer Samsung TVs gained support for 4K60 in December 2022 and newer LG TV will get it later this year.

The GeForce Now Ultimate tier costs $19.99 per month. Games must be purchased separately. Upgraded GeForce RTX 4080 performance will be available in North America and Europe starting later this month, with continued rollout over the months to follow.