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Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

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Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#41

Post by ftrobro »

i5heu wrote: post #28
killingtime74 wrote: post #6

One of the benefits of GeForce now is im pretty sure they are subsidizing it. I get unlimited gaming on a 4080 for USD$20. I have a 4080 at home and I can't get the same latency/frame rate with Parsec even though I have a gigabit connection. Cool project, actual experience unsure.

Also one does have to consider energy! In Germany energy prices are currently at 0.328€/kWh from big providers, and considering a RTX 4080 has 320W alone an say 230W extra for the rest of the system + PSU inefficiencies - my M1 MacBook has way under 30W so the difference between these 2 is 520W.. what means that alone for energy consumption you need to game about 129 hours/month or 4.3/hours per day to break even ...…

Interesting that electricity prices are so different than in southern Sweden even though the distance to Germany is less than 100 km and our grids are somewhat connected. Here in southern Sweden the cost has been negative during daytime for the past week, a trend that will probably continue over summer thanks to solar energy. The net cost for buying electricity is still a bit over 0 though, because of taxes and transfer fees.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#42

Post by ffsm8 »

i5heu wrote: post #28
killingtime74 wrote: post #6

One of the benefits of GeForce now is im pretty sure they are subsidizing it. I get unlimited gaming on a 4080 for USD$20. I have a 4080 at home and I can't get the same latency/frame rate with Parsec even though I have a gigabit connection. Cool project, actual experience unsure.

Also one does have to consider energy! In Germany energy prices are currently at 0.328€/kWh from big providers, and considering a RTX 4080 has 320W alone an say 230W extra for the rest of the system + PSU inefficiencies - my M1 MacBook has way under 30W so the difference between these 2 is 520W.. what means that alone for energy consumption you need to game about 129 hours/month or 4.3/hours per day to break even ...…

> having to buy a 1300€ GPU, that one would have to replace every year

The flagships usually get refreshed every 2+ years, not yearly. If you're switching yearly, then every second change is gonna be a performance downgrade.

Furthermore, the flagship of last generation is usually at least on par with the card below the new flagship, so you'd have top of the line performance for at least 2 generations, which is 3-5 years. The 4080 specifically has worse performance then a 3090 unless you're using dlss/upsampling. Which most people on high budget systems don't want as it increases latency.

Your napkin math wrt the energy doesn't really make sense either, your card only draws so much power if it's actually on full load. My 4090 is usually mostly idle.

My MacBook pro actually draws more then my desktop PC with a 4090 if both are idle (that's because the MacBook has an integrated display which offsets the higher power draw of the desktop components). At least according to the measurements of my smart plugs that measure energy drain at the plug/wall

Finally, there is no way in hell a working adult will find time to play 4+hours day, every day.

Overall I'd say you've no idea what you're talking about and are just rationalizing and in denial. The performance you get from cloud gaming providers is terrible, worse then a budget PC which costs 1k in it's entirely. And you'll still have it at the end, while the cloud gaming subscriber will have nothing after the sub ends.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#43

Post by nolok »

mattlondon wrote: post #17

I am a GFN subscriber (and Stadia prior to that) so I am quite interested in this - GFN is great (I no longer have a gaming laptop and just use game streaming -90% from GFN and the rest via moonlight from a server in my loft/attic) but the major drawback is that you cannot access your entire game library. I presume it is a combination of a) compatibility but probably more likely b) contracts/business/legal. GFN does…

It's legal. They used to cover pretty much all of it then published came at them one after another to want a "deal". The moment they gain any kind of popularity, they're going to hit the same legal wall.

As for using it for your own needs 1:1, I wish steam would expand it's steam to steam self streaming to cover usage out of local lan.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#44

Post by dijit »

ftrobro wrote: post #41
i5heu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also one does have to consider energy! In Germany energy prices are currently at 0.328€/kWh from big providers, and considering a RTX 4080 has 320W alone an say 230W extra for the rest of the system + PSU inefficiencies - my M1 MacBook has way under 30W so the difference between these 2 is 520W.. what means that alone for energy consumption you need to game about 129 hours/month or 4.3/hours per day to break even ...…

Interesting that electricity prices are so different than in southern Sweden even though the distance to Germany is less than 100 km and our grids are somewhat connected. Here in southern Sweden the cost has been negative during daytime for the past week, a trend that will probably continue over summer thanks to solar energy. The net cost for buying electricity is still a bit over 0 though, because of taxes and trans…

SOUTHERN? Sweden? We have the worst electric prices within Sweden. (Malmö at least), the connections to the north where there is a lot of power generation is really weak and they shut down nearly all the power plants in the region, so we are stuck importing expensive energy.

My building has solar on the roof and a collective agreement with e.on precisely to try to control the insane costs.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#45

Post by dijit »

komali2 wrote: post #35
samspenc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and agpl3 too!" If you don't mind, I'm curious what you mean by this :) most service hosting providers I'm aware of (and worked with in the past) run away from AGPL3 software due to the viral nature of the license.

I'm a rabid FOSS evangelist and anticapitalist. If businesses hate it, I typically like it ;) but I also personally believe FOSS, even "viral" licenses (honestly I haven't seen evidence of this in practice though I hear it a lot about GPL), can lead to successful capitalist efforts. For example I believe that FOSS code leads to greater innovations that various organizations can capitalize on and drive profit through.…

AGPL is good because it means people can’t sell a hosted service out of this without open sourcing their fixes, which is the spirit of open source: but GPL was designed before there was so much internet connectedness.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#46

Post by ThatPlayer »

nolok wrote: post #43
mattlondon wrote: post #17

I am a GFN subscriber (and Stadia prior to that) so I am quite interested in this - GFN is great (I no longer have a gaming laptop and just use game streaming -90% from GFN and the rest via moonlight from a server in my loft/attic) but the major drawback is that you cannot access your entire game library. I presume it is a combination of a) compatibility but probably more likely b) contracts/business/legal. GFN does…

It's legal. They used to cover pretty much all of it then published came at them one after another to want a "deal". The moment they gain any kind of popularity, they're going to hit the same legal wall. As for using it for your own needs 1:1, I wish steam would expand it's steam to steam self streaming to cover usage out of local lan.

> I wish steam would expand it's steam to steam self streaming to cover usage out of local lan.

They've done that with their Steam Link apps in 2019: https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/14/18266000/steam-link-anywhe...

The initial pairing has to be done on lan I believe, but will work afterwards through Steam. I remember trying it with a Raspberry Pi even. Steam itself will also work as a client and not require the initial pairing setup.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#47

Post by ThatPlayer »

PrivateButts wrote: post #19

Wait, I thought that you need either a hacked driver or a very expensive license to split up Nvidia GPUs, even within containers?

I'm not sure this does split up the GPU. One of the listed self-hosted requirements is "Your Nvidia GPU should not be attached to a running X display server." Sounds like exclusive GPU use to me.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#48

Post by ftrobro »

ffsm8 wrote: post #42
i5heu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also one does have to consider energy! In Germany energy prices are currently at 0.328€/kWh from big providers, and considering a RTX 4080 has 320W alone an say 230W extra for the rest of the system + PSU inefficiencies - my M1 MacBook has way under 30W so the difference between these 2 is 520W.. what means that alone for energy consumption you need to game about 129 hours/month or 4.3/hours per day to break even ...…

> having to buy a 1300€ GPU, that one would have to replace every year The flagships usually get refreshed every 2+ years, not yearly. If you're switching yearly, then every second change is gonna be a performance downgrade. Furthermore, the flagship of last generation is usually at least on par with the card below the new flagship, so you'd have top of the line performance for at least 2 generations, which is 3-5 ye…

GeForce Now works great. I subscribed for a while to play Cyberpunk 2077 on a remote 4080 and it felt like playing on a local computer. But with much higher settings and framerate than I get on my local GeForce 1080.

> Finally, there is no way in hell a working adult will find time to play 4+hours day, every day.

Don't make the assumption that everyone live their lives exactly like you do.

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#49

Post by ftrobro »

dijit wrote: post #44
ftrobro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that electricity prices are so different than in southern Sweden even though the distance to Germany is less than 100 km and our grids are somewhat connected. Here in southern Sweden the cost has been negative during daytime for the past week, a trend that will probably continue over summer thanks to solar energy. The net cost for buying electricity is still a bit over 0 though, because of taxes and trans…

SOUTHERN? Sweden? We have the worst electric prices within Sweden. (Malmö at least), the connections to the north where there is a lot of power generation is really weak and they shut down nearly all the power plants in the region, so we are stuck importing expensive energy. My building has solar on the roof and a collective agreement with e.on precisely to try to control the insane costs.

Prices were high two years ago, but that is no longer the case. A lot of solar power came online last year. Currently the price is negative:

https://www.eon.se/el/elpriser/aktuella

Re: Show HN: Open-source GeForce NOW alternative with Stadia's social features

#50

Post by fulafel »

killingtime74 wrote: post #6

One of the benefits of GeForce now is im pretty sure they are subsidizing it. I get unlimited gaming on a 4080 for USD$20. I have a 4080 at home and I can't get the same latency/frame rate with Parsec even though I have a gigabit connection. Cool project, actual experience unsure.

What assumptions make it less than profitable at $20? If the hw costs are $1000 and if you'd need a hw setup per every 5 subscribers, you'd get $2400 in 2 years for $1000 in hw investment. Power, bandwidth and other costs are something but doesn't sound obviously unprofitable to me.
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