Gaming With Nvidia's Shield Home Console: Can Your Network Handle It?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
I'm not sure what Nvidias idea is with shield. I could see AMD going for something like this, but those of us who go with GeForce are usually the type that want no compromises I would think, I certainly don't. I don't want to game with a controller unless its fighting or other 2D stuff. 1080p/60fps isn't cutting edge anymore, not on PC. I don't like the idea of an android OS on anything but my phone. I got a decent laptop for 300 bones used that sits on my entertainment center that I can use to do regular stuff, stream from my desktop in Steam or even take on the go and play with its dedicated graphics. I have no interest in something like this
 
I agree. For a PC gamer this is a no go. No reason to downgrade your gaming experience. Now for those console only folks this looks like a promising device and could compete well with PS and Xbox. However, for me - no thanks this thing would collect dust while I played all the same PC games on the device they were designed for - a PC.
 
It's an interesting device, but performance is lack-luster. The best use for this is GameStream, for streaming games you already own from a PC, but Valve's Link and Steam Controller will do it better.
 
I'm not sure what Nvidias idea is with shield. I could see AMD going for something like this, but those of us who go with GeForce are usually the type that want no compromises I would think, I certainly don't. I don't want to game with a controller unless its fighting or other 2D stuff. 1080p/60fps isn't cutting edge anymore, not on PC. I don't like the idea of an android OS on anything but my phone. I got a decent laptop for 300 bones used that sits on my entertainment center that I can use to do regular stuff, stream from my desktop in Steam or even take on the go and play with its dedicated graphics. I have no interest in something like this
Click to expand...

NEVER SETTLE 😀

(You kind of walked into that one)
 
I really wish they had put in TWO X1 chips (60-65w psu?, double wide and fans so the socs are cranked up :)), 4GB (not 3GB) and doubled the storage for another $50. The soc doesn't cost them more than $25 to make (more like 20 probably, charging $30 or something), and it needed more storage already in it. You want it to be able to grow with games for at least a few years before they have to optimize the crap out of games to work right. I think $250 and far better perf (due to TWO X1's, fans debatable) would have really cramped the style of xbox1/ps4 sales. But at $200 I think they went the way of the Wiiu here. Too little, and thus it's sales sucked (not even 10mil in ~2.5yrs? OR just hit 10mil?).

At $250-300 and good enough power to play some really nice looking games (and being at least a tad future-proof), you'd still woo people for the price of android games. I mean Xbox1/ps4 games are $60, and for $60 on android/tegrazone you could get 10 really great full length games (probably more than a dozen actually). If you're bargain hunting you can do even better with games like bard's tale ($1.99 for a few dozen hours of fun) if you haven't played some of the ported hits already elsewhere. Maybe they were just trying to get poor people who thought ouya sucks and want a 4K player etc. It's still a great deal IMHO, just I'd want to get closer to current gen consoles.

I'll wait for whatever they make with the 14nm Finfet chip at xmas from samsung. They'll probably update handheld and tablet with it. T4 was on 28nm for shield handheld, so I'd really like to see a 14nm Finfet with Denver/maxwell both cranked up. Just use the same shells for both units and add more memory/storage for quick time to market and cheap design. They could get me either way if they make these, but I'd need a 13in tablet and 1080p for speed. I have no need for this small of a unit to have higher res, and many games were made for bigger screens and already have puny fonts (on my dad's nexus 10in anyway). For the handheld I don't care if it's 720p as I'll mostly use it out to tv anyway (at 1080 or 4K I guess on a rev2 model here) and only occasionally out of the house.

This is a great device for some (for $100 more than ouya you get so much more power, 4K streaming pc to tv etc), but I need more power and am willing to pay more or wait until they upgrade it. I'll save money over the life of it on tons of cheap android games, where I'd get killed on console game prices year after year. So I don't mind $250-300 for better hardware here (still saving $100-150 out of the gate). Most of the console games are already on PC, so I'm after android stuff on the TV (cheap games not on PC/console in many cases) and streaming to tv from PC's gpu+4K vids. As you get older you can only sit on a PC so long before you require the TV with (fat/bloated) feet up or for some, worries about blood clots etc 😉 8-9hrs at work on a PC and the still more at home on a PC and I need a break on the big screen.
 
is that 50Mbps with the big M? if so not that many people in the US have that. and aside from cities that have google fiber, you'd have to pay an arm and leg to get that kind of bandwidth from comcast/timewarner. at those costs people can be buying titans or at least a 970 or two so there's little reason for people to buy into this platform as it exists atm
 
is that 50Mbps with the big M? if so not that many people in the US have that. and aside from cities that have google fiber, you'd have to pay an arm and leg to get that kind of bandwidth from comcast/timewarner. at those costs people can be buying titans or at least a 970 or two so there's little reason for people to buy into this platform as it exists atm
Click to expand...

I think you mean a big B. There's no difference between Mega and mega. That is a small b.
 


ops, yes that's what I meant... looks like a small 'b'

coming from science though, M is mega, m is milli 😛
 


Well, you got me there!
Normally for network bandwidth, small b is used. I'm not sure if there's a specific reason, or it's just for marketing speeds to sound faster.
 
I have the Shield Tablet and use it stream all my PC (including STEAM library) to my big screen in my living room. The problem with the controller (and the OUYA had the same problem) is that Bluetooth, WiFi direct and 802.x all same the same tiny frequency range. 10 feet away with a clear LOS (line of sight) and the controller lag, "ghosting", etc all happened to me (just like the OUYA). Their answer is "turn off Bluetooth" but the problem with that is I have a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse from the couch so if I want to use K+M or Controller I shouldn't have to change between. While NVIDIA does a fantastic job tuning their software, this (and the entire technology that is Bluetooth, WiFi direct and 802,x) all seem to be trying to defy physics, which wont happen. I do think NVIDIA can fix it, because they do a much better/more competent job than most software companies out there. They are now getting into the territory of their customer base not willing to wait more than 30 days to get the issue fixed. There are better alternatives out there than having to wait.
 
Also Steam doesn't allow GAMESTREAM outside of the LAN. Shield (in beta) allows GAMESTREAM over WAN (aka internet). While it works for some I have yet to get it to work.
 
Also Steam doesn't allow GAMESTREAM outside of the LAN.
setup a fake lan over internet and it works, alto you need quite the internet, at 41Mbits up i could only manage 40~fps on 720p when i had a laptop to my friends house, and playd from my pc at home. you need 100/100 fiber if you like to get out some real performance with acceptable dealy.
 
Michael Justin Allen Sexton (seriously, get a shorter name lol)--

It is extremely ironic that the game you criticized for latency (Doom3) is one of the locally rendered games lol. Shadow of mordor is run through nvidia grid, not doom 3.
 


Android games would be stored locally (maybe steamOS games at some point when it gets ported to ARM, partition your memory card with the OS? who knows), but PC games are streamed from GRID servers (for a subscription fee in a few months, free for now as they work kinks out) or from your PC's gpu in the other room. It's pretty clear to me though, that this product is intended to be used with grid, as they pitch that to everyone without cash for a PC. Of course you get android games local (surely better android games are a goal too), but this is pitching GRID and proving to businesses that it works. They're using games to work out the kinks before pitching it on the market for business. First was streaming from the local network (basic latency work figured out here probably), and now from GRID with internet latency etc being worked out before enterprise adopts it. There are over 1000 businesses trying it, so this could be a huge market for NV (and VMware) once the beta for them is over and people pursue it for real. Virtual gpus is the next big thing just like VM's in servers. If this unit becomes a big hit and pushes better gaming on android (or more PC gpu sales to stream to tv), they get a double/triple bonus over the long haul I guess.

One question I have is how perf is affected when storing the local games on say a 128GB mem card. Do they load slow, herk and jerk whenever the card gets hit or is nothing affected? The storage on this thing isn't much without a card as games up the GB's. It won't be long and 16GB will be filled by 4-5 android games and that's it. We'll have to wait to find that out I guess when full reviews hit. It's still a great deal for some people no doubt (4k player, android gamer, streaming power from grid or PC etc). People who don't have the cash for a powerful pc or even the $40-60 price tag of new games constantly might like a subscription I guess at the right price (not me). I could see streaming my PC to tv on this, but I'd never pay for GRID for games (great for kids who have all day probably). I never know when I'd have time to game, so a subscription is like me buying one for WOW, which is a waste unless you can grind away. I can go months without having much time to game sometimes.
 
Where do the games stream from? as the issues said in the article are either due to lack of throughput or just a underpowered computer to which if shadow of mordor plays fine then it should have had no problems with portal so i am going with it is streaming over a slow network connection.
Is is a external to the local area network Cloud? IF so then i can see this not taking off at all due to bandwidth caps on most of if not all of the USA and most of if not all of Europe too. Game streaming is a very data heavy thing and if it is in a cloud then they really need to either 1 compress the heck out of it or 2 they will stream it at normal like over a LAN and have latency issues like they are saying above. Either one of them i think streaming from steam on my gaming rig to another device in the same network works for me atm.
 
PORTAL loading time:

Your article needs to be updated. Portal is running natively on Android and is not a Grid based game.

There is no network involved. If it loads slow then that's a problem with the game, slow memory, or software issue.

I suppose you could have a hard drive networked to store the game on instead of the local 16GB but you don't state that just suggesting you "share" the network so that's rather confusing. I doubt that's the case or you would have stated this as it's a review.

Here's my main problems then with the article:

1) You don't discuss local vs networked games (GRID vs ANDROID).

2) You don't compare ETHERNET vs Wi-Fi "N" vs Wi-Fi "AC" for the local network

3) You don't compare different BANDWIDTH speeds to the internet such as 20MBps vs 6MBps download.

You stated that "maybe" the problem was a shared network connection. We don't want "maybe" in a review of a product like this. If you can't verify that, or do it correctly then it's worse than no review at all.

I hope you find this constructive.
 


$100 For cox unlimited business 50/15 (put up a server if desired etc). We don't have cable tv though as we use netflix, antenna, youtube etc. We cut the cord years ago. Phone goes over that with vonage also. Considering our cable/phone/internet was $136 or so and NOT unlimited on the consumer side (no special channels), I'm pretty happy for a basically the same price but unlimited now with netflix/roku etc. At these speeds you can hit 10TB in a month if desired 😉

I can hit 4300KB/s, but pretty much peg it all day at 3500+ while streaming netflix and putting 10Mbit dedicated to it so the one TV has zero issues, and it never affects the 3500+ (even if two tv's are streaming 1080p). For the first 22MB of a file they'll turbo it if traffic isn't bad. I think they give far more than they say, as upstream can hit 29Mb/s (nearly double their claims). That download speed is like a DVD5 in 18-20 minutes.

Also with the new FCC rules, you can't claim it's broadband without hitting 25Mb/s down, and cox already sent out notices here in AZ (increased the lowest tier from 15 to 25 IIRC). You can get 150Mb/s for $80/mo on consumer side, with 1TB cap (but they don't enforce their caps until you hit 2TB I think), the slower speeds have 400GB cap, but again not enforced here until you double it IIRC (I called once, and a tech informed me, so we just went business side for $20 more for 3yr). If cable etc doesn't respond, municipalities will start popping up everywhere for $50 a month for 50/50 speeds. Those prices are 1yr though, if you sign up for 3yr they drop a lot. IE the regular price of my connection is $178, but signing up for 3yr got it at $99!

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chattanooga-internet/

What we need is more of these guys 😉 WOW, $58 for 100Mbit, only $70 for Gbit. Google does pretty much the same.

"Nvidia recommends 15 Mbps download speeds for GRID, but the minimum required is 5 Mbps; for premium GRID games, it's a 15 Mbps minimum, but Nvidia recommends 50 Mbps."

The minimum for premium is 15 which is still overshooting IMHO if you get that all day. Still it sounds about right as 1080p superHD on netflix is <6Mb/s and running 2 TV's here doesn't even drop my download speeds. I'm limited by the server I'm downloading from (or cox limits SSL), not my connection using 2 tv's. They are REALLY overshooting saying 50.

Standard-definition Netflix streams can consume up to 2.2 Mbps of bandwidth. Netflix's 720p HD videos come in at roughly 3.8 Mbps, and 1080p videos go up to 4.8 Mbps. I think superhd is ~6. Quick google gets:
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2013/09/netflix-doubles-video-quality-making-6mbps-superhd-streams-available-everyone.html
MAX 6 according to netflix (originally said 7, but revised to 6 max I guess).

http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/netflix-makes-1080p-super-hd-streams-available-to-all-users/
Netflix recommends 7 for superHD, but it's only using about 6 or less. Note the 4K only uses 15. They only hope you have more just in case you can't get your max steady (IE, shoot for 50, they hope you always get 15 sustained and will never complain). Most TV shows that are 720p are ripped at 1.3GB and 1080p are around 1.5-1.7 (for 41-44 minute shows) and they all look great. That's about 235 tv episodes a month (over 300 at 720 ~3600-4000bitrate) at 400GB cap (which isn't even enforced). I guess if you're watching ALL super HD stuff it's upped to 4300 on 720. Unless you're retired, that's pretty tough to get through at about 7.5hrs/day (or more like 10hrs at 720 regular, and some shows are only in 480) for 30 days and many don't have a cap at all (like me). It's pretty doable as is IMHO. FCC just required 25 for broadband so everyone getting broadband will have 25Mb/s shortly or they can't advertise it as broadband. Since the X1 can decode h265 the data usage should be lower (vs. x264 anyway) than mentioned above & NV can send h265 from grid to this box.
 


I think this is just a preview. They were doing this from GDC 2015 floor show. Not exactly time for all that you're talking about, but I agree with what you're saying SHOULD be in a REAL review once they get on in house and have the time to do all that. Too many variables on a GDC showroom to do this stuff (IE, tons streaming etc all fighting for the same building bandwidth that won't happen in a home scenario). This post is just in GAMING NEWS. Not the review section.
 
You're forgetting to account that this is game streaming not just video streaming. I forget where I saw it but I believe they were saying it's something like 1.4 gigs a minute of usage.
 


That would be 1400MB per minute which works out to ~23.5MB/sec, not Mbit, full MBytes. I don't think so. I'd love to have that fat of a pipe though...LOL. That's roughly 250Mbit/s. I get 50Mb/s and hit about 3.5-4MB/s. Netflix SuperHD streams at 6Mb/s or so. Grid streaming a squished video will probably be in the same range at 1080p or less at 720. They'll have two subs, one at 720 the premium at 1080.

It shouldn't take any more than streaming a netflix movie, as both are streaming a 720 or 1080 squished movie. I'm guessing better on the game side since it's h265 most likely since NV can squish it to whatever format they want (h265 uses less than h264 for same content) with the console having the ability to decode h265 in hardware. Same statement I made about watching all that TV applies to gaming. You'd have to be retired or a kid whole all day to run that up and nobody enforces caps so far and after FCC stuff it will get even tougher most likely as ISP's can pop up anywhere soon to compete finally (municipalities, google etc).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom