GTX1080 Mac Drivers Imminent?

[mrmoebius]

NVidia just announced their new GEFORCE NOW platform with the following copy:

"Now you can transform your Mac or PC into a powerful NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 gaming machine with easy access to the latest PC games"

It explicitly indicates Mac, and explicitly indicates the GTX1080, so could this mean our wait for 1080 drivers is finally going to come to an end and we can make the leap?

http://www.geforce.com/geforce-now

 

[trs96]

No, you're misunderstanding this. This is gaming on a Mac via a VM. Does not help us any. Doesn't mean there will be Web drivers for Pascal cards. Sorry to break your bubble.

 

[mrmoebius]

No, you're misunderstanding this. This is gaming on a Mac via a VM. Does not help us any. Doesn't mean there will be Web drivers for Pascal cards. Sorry to break your bubble.

The host OS would need to have proper drivers to do this though, so it couldn't be in a VM. Your argument might still be valid if the platform they are announcing is a bootcamp OS, but wouldn't it be a bit nonsensical for NVidia to sell a video card for mac with the sole purpose to run it in a VM or in bootcamp? Crippling would be an understatement.

 

[izo1]

No, please keep in the other massive thread.

There's zero certainty about the drivers.

This is just nVidia being greedy as usual -- although cloud GPUs are not new, this is a welcome addition -- but too pricey to be used in a realistic setting. Also this is for gamers, not people who want to get work done.

 

[izo1]

The host OS would need to have proper drivers to do this though, so it couldn't be in a VM. Your argument might still be valid if the platform they are announcing is a bootcamp OS, but wouldn't it be a bit nonsensical for NVidia to sell a video card for mac with the sole purpose to run it in a VM or in bootcamp? Crippling would be an understatement.

This is a VM like trs96 mentioned. You launch your, lets say, Steam client and it launches in the cloud and you can play the games from your library that you bought -- for $25 for 20 hours.

Also from the demo it looks like it lags a lot, so I assume something like a 100M connection will be required.

 

[trs96]

If you read their info they say "in the cloud" multiple numbers of times. No Mac Pascal drivers needed for this.

instant access to GeForce GTX 1080 gaming in the cloud
on your virtual gaming PC in the cloud

 

[mrmoebius]

This is a VM like trs96 mentioned. You launch your, lets say, Steam client and it launches in the cloud and you can play the games from your library that you bought -- for $25 for 20 hours.

Also from the demo it looks like it lags a lot, so I assume something like a 100M connection will be required.

Do you have a source where they say this will be a VM based services? Please link.

 

[mrmoebius]

Also from the demo it looks like it lags a lot, so I assume something like a 100M connection will be required.

They are saying 25M. Maybe you're right, but launching a cloud service doesn't seem like any kind of way to sell cards. Intriguing I'll admit, but if that's their actual plan, I'm not impressed.

 

[mrmoebius]

You're right. Cloud service. I think I'm gonna hurl.

http://www.geforce.com/geforce-now/faq

 

[slim.jim]

The main goal of this is that most people own laptops without a discrete GPU. And, those that do own a laptop with a discrete GPU it generally isn't designed for gaming unless they shelled out some pretty big bucks. This will bring gaming to those devices.