Shadow.tech streaming PC vs. real Desktop

[Michael]

So it's $409/year ($25 first month, then 35 thereafter) if you do month-to month. OR its $294 if you pay for year in advance. That's not cheapest, but have to weigh cost vs building/buying your own rig, or having to upgrade it every year or two. Main benefit is that they pay to upgrade their hardware, while your fee stays the same. So in theory your virtual PC should always have fairly top of the line performance. I'd say try it for one month for 25 bucks. If you think it's route you want to take then it's clearly cost beneficial to sign up for a year.

For connection/bandwidth this is what they have to say:

I think you will also need to calculate the cost for a basic rig as you probably don't want to play it on your smartphone. Still this can be a very cheap one lets assume 100-150 $ additional cost per year.
Next thing is and this is something i don't really know, because its not available for me here, if there are any additional cost to upgrade from ADSL to FTTH.
Lets not look at that further as you might already have that available or use it for other purpose.

So this will leave us with a range of ~400 - 550 $ per year.
I would estimate the cost for a similar gaming rig at around ~1000 $. (if you build it by yourself)
So you could upgrade your rig roughly every 2 years to a "good bang for the buck" for the money you spend on shadow tech.

This not factoring in that you might resell older components, reuse parts of your rig, higher energy cost of a gaming rig vs. this "low budget rig" i mentioned above and other stuff like that.

---------------
my conclusion:
If you don't care about building the rig by yourself, have fast internet available this might be an option for you.
If you build pc systems by yourself you might be better off without it

 

[at-2500]

@August the reason they're using Quatro GPUs instead of GTX is because GTX is a single-user GPU. It only has 2 stream processors. Quatro is a similar performance multi-user server GPU.

If they used GTX they would literally need 1 PC per user. They're not selling you that, they are selling you a VIRTUAL PC. They have servers with lots of cores, lots of RAM, and multiple Quatro GPUs, and you just get to use a piece of it. It's much more cost effective for them and you get similar performance. It would be significantly more expensive (for them, AND you) if they used GTX, and the performance gain would only be marginal.

There is another reason why they use a Quadro instead of a GTX: NVIDIA prohibits using GeForce cards in data centers:
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/nvidia-updates-geforce-eula-to-prohibit-data-center-use/

 

[Montoya]

Actually toured Shadow's offices in San Francisco and met with their community manager while visiting for Twitchcon. Definitely very interesting technology. Maybe I will follow up with them and get some kind of exclusive deal for TEST members.

SHILL!!!

They were very cool, I saw that they recently got Linus a tour too.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BQ4bXNdEQI

 

[LookingGlass]

I tried to sign up for this service, simply because I wanted to test it out. I’m curious about the latency, which is what caused most of these services to die.

Sadly, this service isn’t available in Indianapolis, yet..

 

[Radegast74]

I signed up for it to try it out (used your code radegast)..

Hey, thanks man!

I'm glad you are also getting good performance! Proves it isn't a fluke. FYI, I found the secret to using my dual joytsick set up....I've been meaning to post a final follow up summary with more details...

So anyone did the math about the cost?
What is the minimium hardware someone will need to use shadow tech?
How much bandwidth do you need?

See my top posts, but basically, if you have a computer & connection that can run a browser and stream a movie, you could potentially run this. For bandwidth, to run Star Citizen, you need at least 40 Mb/s down. Their default setting is to stream the game at 20 Mb/s, but I had bad audio on every game I played wth that setting. It worked well at 30 Mb/s...I figure you also need some overhead for all the M$ spai telemetry and other stuff your computer is doing...check out your bandwidth at an internet speedtest site to see if your connection is good enough.

The math of the cost is exactly as stated above. Full cost is $35 a month. If you use a code (like mine or anybody elses) you can get the first month for $25...they then will send you an email trying to hook you in for 6 months at $30 a month...they also then sent me an email for 12 months for $25 a month. Not sure everybody would get the same deal, though, ymmv.

So the most expensive option is to NOT use a code and go month to month --> $420 / year
Cheapest possible is use code, first month is $25 then commit to a year at 25 per month --> $300 / year

You can always just go month to month...

I see a couple use cases:
1. Somebody who doesn't have a PC at all and wants to try out a new PC game...instead of shelling out $1500+ on a new PC, you just pay $35/month.
2. Somebody who has an old potato PC that wants to wait a couple of months before upgrading...you can go month to month and wait for the next generation of CPU's or GPU's to come out, and see if you can get any deals...
3. Maybe you have a great desktop PC, but all of a sudden you are travelling, or taking a 2 week vacation and you can't bear to not play for that long...well, now you can just stream the game to your regular laptop.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

 

[Xist]

There is another reason why they use a Quadro instead of a GTX: NVIDIA prohibits using GeForce cards in data centers:
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/nvidia-updates-geforce-eula-to-prohibit-data-center-use/

With or without the EULA prohibition, GTX simply doesn't have the right hardware to serve multiple users simultaneously, so there is zero economy of scale in using those and the long term costs would be much higher than using a Quatro.

The operational economics of it just don't make sense with GTX.

 

[Radegast74]

SHILL!!!

They were very cool, I saw that they recently got Linus a tour too.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BQ4bXNdEQI

Just my opnion --> PC gamers & the master race are pretty crusty and aren't going to give up their ability to build their own rigs for a while...

Console gaming devices are all going to be streaming devices soon, not next generation (not the PS5 or the XBone 2), but the generation after that (so, PS6 & XBone 3).

I'm betting that over 95% of console gamers have never opened up their device, ever. It could have a pile of sawdust inside, and they wouldn't know.

If the big corporations didn't have to manufacture hardware...they would save a ton of money. So with consoles, it isn't "if" but "when" and especially, "how soon."

 

[wmk]

Looks interesting, however performance doesn't seem to be the best -- on the other hand I'm not sure if the current version of Star Citizen is the best game to test it.

I've been testing Nvidia GeForce NOW for almost a year now -- it's a closed beta test that is running for some time. The performance of Nvidia's cloud gaming service is very good /check the video below if you're interested/, but it has one disadvantage, at least at this stage: it doesn't allow you to install any game other than those available on Uplay or Steam. I asked for Star Citizen support few times, but the answer is always no, and the reason is obvious: SC is not even in beta stage. It would be a maintenance nightmare on Nvidia side to support the frequently updated, unoptimised alpha version of the game, that might cause out-of-memory issues or CPU exhaustions at any time, without any warning.

By the way this is probably one of the reasons why Nvidia doesn't allow Geforce GPUs to be used in data center. It's hard to blame Nvidia for protecting its own future cloud gaming business. /Another reason is probably crypto mining/.

 

[DontTouchMyHoHos]

Just my opnion --> PC gamers & the master race are pretty crusty and aren't going to give up their ability to build their own rigs for a while...

Console gaming devices are all going to be streaming devices soon, not next generation (not the PS5 or the XBone 2), but the generation after that (so, PS6 & XBone 3).

I'm betting that over 95% of console gamers have never opened up their device, ever. It could have a pile of sawdust inside, and they wouldn't know.

If the big corporations didn't have to manufacture hardware...they would save a ton of money. So with consoles, it isn't "if" but "when" and especially, "how soon."

I'm with you on this, im not going to give up my ability to build a desktop. That shit is fun.

 

[GarikDuvall]

Update from Shadow today:
"New CPU Upgrade is Here! Great News! Shadow has rolled out upgraded Intel processors to all our US users. This seamless boost to computing power will improve Shadow’s performance by 20%."

 

[Bambooza]

I'm still thinking the lag updates on the screen would make any fps game impractical to play on a remote server.

 

[PublicWifi]

I keep seeing ads for similar products or apps which allow an end user to provide the same service (game streaming / cloud streaming, etc).

I'd be curious as to how latency effects overall in-game response time (outside of the obvious high ping).

 

[Wolfy]

Actually toured Shadow's offices in San Francisco and met with their community manager while visiting for Twitchcon. Definitely very interesting technology. Maybe I will follow up with them and get some kind of exclusive deal for TEST members.

I will probably be subscribing to them soon so that would be pretty sweet.

 

[Radegast74]

Looks interesting, however performance doesn't seem to be the best -- on the other hand I'm not sure if the current version of Star Citizen is the best game to test it.

I've been testing Nvidia GeForce NOW for almost a year now -- it's a closed beta test that is running for some time. The performance of Nvidia's cloud gaming service is very good /check the video below if you're interested/, but it has one disadvantage, at least at this stage: it doesn't allow you to install any game other than those available on Uplay or Steam. I asked for Star Citizen support few times, but the answer is always no, and the reason is obvious: SC is not even in beta stage. It would be a maintenance nightmare on Nvidia side to support the frequently updated, unoptimised alpha version of the game, that might cause out-of-memory issues or CPU exhaustions at any time, without any warning.

The big advantage of Shadow is that you are streaming a Virtual PC from the cloud. There are no restrictions to what you can run on it...it is a PC in the cloud that you can access anywhere and run whatever you want on it, subject to the current 256GB disk limit. Heck, I'm thinking of keeping it just so I can access some PC apps from any of my Mac's at any time.

Update from Shadow today:
"New CPU Upgrade is Here! Great News! Shadow has rolled out upgraded Intel processors to all our US users. This seamless boost to computing power will improve Shadow’s performance by 20%."

SWEET! I'll have to run another test soon!

I'm still thinking the lag updates on the screen would make any fps game impractical to play on a remote server.

I keep seeing ads for similar products or apps which allow an end user to provide the same service (game streaming / cloud streaming, etc).

I'd be curious as to how latency effects overall in-game response time (outside of the obvious high ping).

I'm currently in the 3.4 PTU right now. Performance is good, but I wouldn't want people to think that what it does now is actually representative of regular performance. As soon as the latest version is released LIVE (and the servers have calmed down a bit) I'll post another update.

 

[Bambooza]

Was just thinking even with a ping of 60m/s your introducing a 60m/s delay between when something happens and when you react to it on top of the delay the data center has with the the game server. (30m/s delay of the screen and a 30m/s delay of the keyboard/mouse command updating the VS) vs a home PC that has only the computer/server delay to deal with. While some games might be more forgiving its going to be most noticeable on FPS games.

 

[PublicWifi]

Was just thinking even with a ping of 60m/s your introducing a 60m/s delay...

That's what I was thinking.

I've worked a lot with sound editing and music creation. Virtual instruments / VST's and latency often times create problems whenever direct input and playback are desired. Not having a dedicated soundcard or the proper driver installed may result in a 50-300ms delay from keypress (input) to soundcard output. So, long story long, instant response is preferred for live recording.

An 80-120m/s ping might be acceptable for an FPS game, client side, when playing. Introducing such delays when you don't have direct response seems like it could be a problem.

 

[DontTouchMyHoHos]

no matter how "powerful" they make it, the latency will not be sufficient enough for fast pace gameplay. With multiplayer games, you are essentially doubling the latency with single player games you are adding latency that otherwise would have never exsisted.

 

[GarikDuvall]

I don't know, because clearly these businesses already have a lot of customers. And a good number of people who are using it, seem to be doing so for Star Citizen since its a more demanding game. I haven't heard of too many issues due to latency for this game at least (but then again the game and the service are still both new). But, can't really be that choosy if you are having to use the service because your own PC doesn't cut it (or chosen to use them in lieu of upgrading pc). I've seen latency tests that show slight latency that could MAYBE be an issue and others that have showed little to no extra latency. Everyone's mileage will very on that of course.

 

[Radegast74]

I don't know, because clearly these businesses already have a lot of customers. And a good number of people who are using it, seem to be doing so for Star Citizen since its a more demanding game. I haven't heard of too many issues due to latency for this game at least (but then again the game and the service are still both new). But, can't really be that choosy if you are having to use the service because your own PC doesn't cut it (or chosen to use them in lieu of upgrading pc). I've seen latency tests that show slight latency that could MAYBE be an issue and others that have showed little to no extra latency. Everyone's mileage will very on that of course.

I am interested in latency...now that the ESP seems to be working a little bit better, ship combat (first with NPC's and then with real players) would be interesting to test. So would some SPK hi-jinks... I'm going to wait until after the holidays, when 3.4 is released, the servers are back to normal, and things calm down a little.

 

[Vavrik]

You're going to be pleasantly surprised.