You can now get 360fps Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 performance without a GPU upgrade

You can now reap the benefits of owning a super-fast Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 gaming GPU without having to hand over an enormous sum of cash for a new graphics card, according to Nvidia. The company has just added an Nvidia GeForce Now RTX 5080 tier to its streaming service, saying that it can run your games at 360fps without suffering from latency issues.

Nvidia senior marketing manager Andrew Fear described the move to us in a press briefing as "one of the biggest updates we've ever had in the history of GeForce Now, and a big leap forward." As we found in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 review, this GPU is supremely powerful, although it also benefits from a lack of competition from AMD in its market sector. It's one of the top picks on our guide to buying the best GPU, and now Nvidia says you can get this level of performance without needing to buy one.

That 360fps figure was achieved in Overwatch 2 at 1,920 x 1,080, and Nvidia says it measured the latency at just 30ms (where the time is measured from making a mouse click to the result appearing on screen, known as click-to-photon), compared to 49ms running the same game on a PlayStation 5 Pro in 120Hz mode.

That's a remarkable result for a game streaming service, and Nvidia claims it's possible thanks to its work on improving latency. Naturally, this includes the company's low-latency Reflex tech, but Nvidia has also been working with ISPs, including BT Group, Comcast, and T-Mobile, to incorporate L4S (low latency, low loss) tech into its services, preventing packets from being dropped when running GeForce Now, and improving latency. The idea, Fear told us at a press briefing, is to "make it feel like a local gaming PC."

Nvidia also says that the service will enable you to play games at 1440p at 240fps and even games at 5K at up to 120fps, saying that it offers a 2.8x frame rate increase vs the previous RTX 4080 tier. However, this 2.8x figure is achieved using multi-frame gen, a new part of Nvidia DLSS 4 that uses AI to generate three extra frames for every one that's genuinely rendered by the GPU.

It can work well in the right circumstances, but it's also not a magic fix for bad performance - if a game is running at 120fps with multi-frame gen, for example, then the original frame rate will be 30-40fps, which is going to feel unresponsive in fast-paced games.

Only 20 games will be available to the RTX 5080 GeForce Now tier at launch, but Nvidia says it will be adding more games every week. Perhaps best of all, it's going to be the same $19.99 price as the current RTX 4080 tier, so it won't cost you any more money to upgrade to the new top tier. The Nvidia GeForce Now RTX 5080 service is due to roll out in September 2025.

Nvidia says it's also providing a substantial boost to the image quality of its game streaming service with this latest update, in a suite of technologies it calls Cinematic Quality Streaming (CQS), and which Nvidia says provides "quality that rivals local PC gaming."

These include YUV 4:4:4 Chroma, which means there's no subsampling of color information in the stream to improve bandwidth, giving you full color precision. Colors are also given a boost with support for HDR10 and SDR10, while Nvidia says its use of the AV1 video codec with Reference Picture Resampling (RPR) makes for a stable stream with smooth resolution shifts.

There's also an AI video filter, which Nvidia says results in cleaner motion in your game stream, with less noise and distracting artifacts, while the fast 100Mbps bit rate ensures that detail doesn't get lost. Nvidia provided a comparative screenshot of Black Myth Wukong with CQS on and off to show the difference, with a sharper, less blurry image with it on, although you do have to look closely to see the difference in the detail on the treet trunk - I've brightened it up in the image below to show it more clearly.

Other new features coming to GeForce Now include new handheld modes, which can now max out the refresh rates of the screens on the Lenovo Legion Go S and Steam Deck at 90fps and 120Hz, respectively. Nvidia is also now supporting Logitech racing wheels with haptics in GeForce Now, as well as LG 4K TVs with HDR at 120fps, and LG 5K OLED TVs at 120fps.

A new install-to-play feature is also being added that works with over 2,200 Steam games (the service only works on Steam), doubling the size of the GeForce Now game library. You'll get 100GB of single-session cloud storage, using a high-speed NVMesh storage system that Nvidia says "provides local-like performance," with which you can install these extra games to the service.

However, this storage will, by default, only last for that session, after which you will need to reinstall the game. Alternatively, you can pay extra money for a "persistent storage" system that preserves your game installs - these cost $2.99/£2.69 for 200GB, $4.99/£4.49 for 500GB, or $7.99/£6.99 for 1TB of storage. Nvidia describes this new service as a "terrific feature for demos."

If you're thinking of subscribing to the new GeForce Now tier, you don't need to worry about buying a graphics card. Instead, you just need to make sure you have the best gaming monitor you can afford from our buying guide, and you can check out our guides to buying the best gaming keyboard, as well as the best gaming mouse, to complete your setup.

Head over to our Discord server to discuss the new changes to Nvidia GeForce Now, and whether you think they're worth the money.