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Nvidia making its own PC streaming device?

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Gamestreaming

Nvidia released its own handheld gaming device, The Shield, not too long ago, an android-powered micro-console with its own screen. It has largely failed to catch on – even though we’ve always suspected that nobody really needed or wanted the thing. It’s most intriguing feature, for me anyway, is its ability to stream PC games to the console itself, or a connected TV – mimicking the Wii U’s Gamepad or PlayStation Vita remote play. Now, according to the BBC, Nvidia is making a dedicated bit of hardware just for that purpose.

It appears to be an Android microconsole in itself, that is able to piggyback on the GPU installed in your desktop. The BBC says the new peripheral will be equipped with an HDMI out to connect to your TV, and will ship with an optional controller as an accessory. According to The Beeb, the set-top box will be able to play Android games thanks to the Tegra K1 chipset that powers it.

While everybody seems to be jumping on the microconsole bandwagon, one from Nvidia that is purpose built for streaming games to a TV may actually catch on – depending on price, of course. Price is one of the reasons Shield is largely ignored. The other limiting factor? The fact that it requires a relatively high-end Nvidia card just to work – and the same is probably true of the new unit.

“I think it’s fair to say that Shield sold reasonably poorly,” said Ed Barton, a games industry analyst at the consultancy Ovum, who has now seen the new device.

“And if the new device requires your PC to have a relatively new Nvidia GPU [graphics processing unit] to make use of its abilities, that will really limit its addressable market.”

Of course, the BBC could have its info a bit wrong and they could well be talking about the rumoured Nvidia tablet.

I’ve been having endless hassles with AMD’s drivers of late – and I’d be happy to switch back to Nvidia with my next card, thanks to features like Shadowplay, hardware PhysX processing and all of those additional Gameworks benefits. Of course, many of you will likely tell me of your issues with Nvidia. That’s the nature of it though; ask ten people which GPU maker they favour and why, and you’ll get 10 different reasons.

Last Updated: July 15, 2014

46 Comments

  1. Alien Emperor Trevor

    July 15, 2014 at 09:14

    Seriously, what’s the story with driver issues with gfx cards? I have NEVER had an issue with drivers in my life, be it ATI/AMD, Nvidia or even my ancient Tseng Labs ET6000 yet people are forever whining about it. I’m starting to think it’s one of those things people complain about because that’s what they’ve heard they should complain about but don’t actually know. Seriously. NEVER. Maybe it’s because I don’t fuck around with things. Install – just works – update as needed – just works.

    Reply

    • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

      July 15, 2014 at 09:27

      It happens hey. Some people experience issues with some games freaking out and artifacting after a driver update or something stops working like it used to.
      It all depends what and how the machine is used.

      Some people moan because an update will break dual monitor set ups somehow, like icons not remembering their position or states. Or the second screen suddenly appearing fuzzy.

      Or a specific game may now have artifacts and glitches or even underperform compared to before the driver update.

      You are lucky I guess that so far updates have not broken anything for you. I’ve been just as lucky with my nVidia drivers. I’ve only had 1 driver problem since I got my 560ti and that was a beta driver that broke Diablo3 performance. But since it was a beta driver there was no harm and I just rolled back to the last official driver set

      Reply

    • Mossel

      July 15, 2014 at 09:33

      Agreed. I think I had a minor issue this one time, but simply reinstalling the driver fixed it. So yeah, don’t know what people are doing. It’s like when my mom says her MS Word vanished! No mom, you deleted it. There is no other explanation.

      Reply

      • Alien Emperor Trevor

        July 15, 2014 at 09:37

        lol!

        “All my quotes are gone!”
        “Did you accidentally delete them?”
        “NO!”
        “Have you looked in your recycle bin?”
        “……..I didn’t delete them.”
        “Uh huh”

        Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

        July 15, 2014 at 09:38

        The worst is if they deleted only the shortcut on the desktop and believe word is gone completely. Forget about clicking on the start menu. Why would one ever click the start menu? *facepalm*

        Reply

        • Skyblue

          July 15, 2014 at 10:18

          Windows 8.0 – click on that Start Menu ;-P

          Reply

          • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

            July 15, 2014 at 10:20

            gg

      • Exalted Overlord Geoffrey Tim

        July 15, 2014 at 09:55

        I have an AMD driver issue where if i try play a webm or mp4 video in a browser, my pc will crash. Re-installed the entire fucking OS after trying all sorts of fixes.
        atikmdag.sys can kiss my arse.

        Reply

        • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

          July 15, 2014 at 10:04

          specific browser or any browser?

          Reply

          • Exalted Overlord Geoffrey Tim

            July 15, 2014 at 11:58

            Any browser. 🙁

          • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

            July 15, 2014 at 12:06

            That sucks man. Really messed up

        • FoxOneZA

          July 15, 2014 at 10:57

          Had a similar issue on a PC with Intel HD graphics.

          PS: Did you just say Beeb…err? 😛

          Reply

    • Skyblue

      July 15, 2014 at 10:15

      You are probably the exception to the rule. I had major driver issues trying to get Mass Effect 2 running a few months back and because I play a lot of older titles in between newer ones I do often have to use workarounds to just get things working, running smoothly or just working in a widescreen format.

      Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

        July 15, 2014 at 10:24

        widescreen format on older games is a coding issue. Not really a driver issue hey.

        Reply

        • Skyblue

          July 15, 2014 at 10:27

          True but I threw it in there while making the point about getting things to work properly. I am an OCD gamer who has to have everything perfect before playing a title. I am the problem, I know this.

          Reply

          • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

            July 15, 2014 at 10:27

            hahahaha. Admitting is the first step to recovery

    • Thats_how_I_Troll

      July 16, 2014 at 16:06

      You see Trev, not everyone quite knows how to use a computer… Myself never had driver problems… And definitely never had to reload an OS due to driver issues. That seems to be a google solution… or is this the Asian way Geoff?

      Reply

  2. Sir Rants A Lot Llew

    July 15, 2014 at 09:23

    It will most certainly catch on IF it doesn’t require a new (keplar based and up) geforce to actually stream it.

    However there is a big hurdle to overcome even if it runs off of any hardware: Steam in-home streaming.

    I tried it out this weekend. Hooked laptop up to wifi, logged in to steam on both my primary desktop and underpowered laptop. Streamed Borderlands 2 to laptop. It worked beautifully. Next to no latency (the latency that was present was random so I assume it was due to the wifi). There was no noticeable input lag and no strange behaviour one would expect from streaming a screen over a network.

    The best part is you can stream anything using Steam. Not just steam games. Add any program you wish to Steam as a non-steam game shortcut and you can stream that application from within steam. I even did it with XBMC and it worked like a charm (However that needed a cable connection for the audio to come out right)

    So nVidia need to make sure of the following:
    1) You don’t need a keplar based GPU
    2) You need to be able to stream pretty much from the desktop and up. If they create a full PC streaming unit it would be fantastic.
    3) Price. Steam in-home streaming is free. This unit can not go and be pricey because the Steam version is free and can be made to stream even your desktop environment by a bit of “cheating”

    Reply

    • Viking Of Science

      July 15, 2014 at 09:27

      The Latency is due to the Wifi Network, I’ve found the same… This could be remedied With a Stronger Wifi router though… (I’ve got the Out of the Box Telkom one)

      Reply

      • Viking Of Science

        July 15, 2014 at 09:28

        Even more impressive is that the Home Strwaming on Steam is Still technically in BETA. So it’s getting better and better.

        Reply

        • Admiral Chief Fairburne

          July 15, 2014 at 09:30

          What is Strwaming precious?

          Reply

          • Viking Of Science

            July 15, 2014 at 09:38

            It’s the act of Sending a Schwarma over a wireless Network 😛

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            July 15, 2014 at 09:42

            You’d think he’d know that. What a NOOB!

          • Admiral Chief Fairburne

            July 15, 2014 at 10:01

            I prefer my food in realtime, not with lag

          • Mossel

            July 15, 2014 at 09:43

            Patent pending. That sounds amazing.

          • Admiral Chief Fairburne

            July 15, 2014 at 10:01

            Riiiiight

        • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

          July 15, 2014 at 09:31

          Agreed. I was very impressed

          Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

        July 15, 2014 at 09:31

        Yeah I have a Huawei b683 (3G and all that) and it has wireless N capability but unfortunately the range is not all great through walls.

        So I am sure a better wifi device would be perfect. I’m thinking of getting a wifi extender that can plug in to the router’s network ports and provide stronger and better throughput

        Reply

    • Alien Emperor Trevor

      July 15, 2014 at 09:28

      Well if Steam already does all that, it works well & it’s free – then this thing sounds dead on arrival. It sounded pretty pointless to me even before reading this.

      Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

        July 15, 2014 at 09:36

        No it will have its uses.

        Also the Steam streaming relies on the device you are streaming to, to be able to support proper full HD h.264 decoding. So if you don’t have at least an i3 or equivalent you are going to struggle.

        This device will have full hardware decoding on it and is more specialized. It’s meant to be plugged in to a TV as a set top box.

        Steam streaming requires you to run steam on the device being streamed to. You can’t do that on a TV unless you have a laptop or something attached to it.

        So this is more aimed at streaming over the network to the TV without requiring a laptop or other such things attached to the TV.

        I can see where it would work and how it could be really cool and useful. But yeah as I said it would have to do it very well and for pretty cheap or people will use Steam streaming off of something like a Rasberry PI once Steam supports streaming via Linux (Alas Steam OS cannot work on a PI)

        Reply

    • Errol The Terrible

      July 15, 2014 at 10:16

      Funny thing is that I have a GTX760 2GB which supports streaming, but I have an old Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 CPU, so I can’t stream. So stuff Nvidia and their “streaming”.

      Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

        July 15, 2014 at 10:20

        Stream using what exactly?

        Reply

        • Errol The Terrible

          July 15, 2014 at 10:51

          Stream using Nvidia’s streaming. It has a big red cross next to my CPU.
          I upgraded from a GT8800 to the GTS760. More than 10% increase.
          CPU is fine. I play Witcher 3 at a comfortable 2650X1600…

          Reply

          • Spaffy

            July 15, 2014 at 11:13

            You play Witcher 3…

          • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

            July 15, 2014 at 11:48

            Yeah but that’s for streaming to the nVidia shield. So it will fail. The streaming to that is failed. Which is why I said that they cannot make their new streaming unit need such high requirements.

            Your CPU can handle video streaming with no hassles. Steam streaming would work so there is no reason nVidia can’t make their new streaming device work

          • Errol The Terrible

            July 15, 2014 at 12:57

            Yeah yeah, Witcher 2. Too much talk of Witcher3 these days. Couldn’t play Witcher2 at all on my old GT8800, GTX760 works great. No bottleneck. Have not tried Steam streaming. Might try it this weekend…

            On top of that I have to kill the Nvidia streaming service on my PC as sometimes it would use 100% CPU after waking from sleep. Funny how my PC “doesn’t support streaming”, but Nvidia starts the broken service anyway…

          • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

            July 15, 2014 at 13:25

            There I have to agree with you. It irritates me that the streaming service is running regardless. It’s a waste of memory

          • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

            July 15, 2014 at 11:49

            Also, how can you possibly be playing Witcher 3?

      • Skyblue

        July 15, 2014 at 10:20

        I would have purchased a new processor before that video card. Most newer titles benefit far more from processing grunt than 10% GPU performance increases.

        Reply

        • Spaffy

          July 15, 2014 at 11:16

          You usually get more than a 10% increase from one generation to another.
          From a 8800 to a 760 should be a massive increase.
          Ex. from my 5870 to my 6870 was about 10%. From my 6870 to my current 7870 was about 20%.
          There must be a massive bottleneck on his pc setup

          Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

        July 15, 2014 at 10:23

        Remember the only reason I said an i3 or equivelant is because I was talking about devices that don’t have dedicated graphics cards and would use the CPU built in graphics processors. Your machine should be able to stream fairly well with a 760 on it because that’s where the Stream encoding would occur?

        Reply

  3. MakeItLegal

    July 15, 2014 at 09:50

    didn steam cover this 2 weeks ago , with steam stream ? or what eva ? also , it better be cheap , my 15k rig will not be impressed with spending another 3k on a gloried control

    Reply

    • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

      July 15, 2014 at 09:54

      Yeah the steam streaming is awesome. Tried it myself.
      However I can see where this can fit in. Steam streaming has to happen between 2 devices running Steam so you’d need to have a Steam Machine or laptop/PC plugged in to your TV to Stream stuff there.

      This device could potentially allow you to stream everything without needing much. But as you said it had better be cheap because once Steam supports streaming to a linux machine then a Rasberry PI + Linux would work almost just as well.

      The only difference being that the nVidia unit would support full on hardware decoding for the stream. What kind of difference that is going to make is still to be seen

      Reply

      • MakeItLegal

        July 15, 2014 at 10:28

        I like your view , thanks for sharing 🙂

        Reply

        • Sir Rants A Lot Llew

          July 15, 2014 at 11:51

          No worries 🙂 glad you agree 🙂

          Reply

  4. Maxiviper117

    July 15, 2014 at 13:12

    Or you could just use Steams new streaming ability. Stream games from your gaming pc to a cheap laptop or mini computer with a hdmi output to a TV.

    Reply

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