- Joined
- Jun 13, 2005
- Messages
- 61,575
- Reaction score
- 25,595
Today is a study in clickbait. In the more distant future, this could be devastating to all the hardware vendors that don't specialize in low-cost, low-power products like the major ARM players: Qualcomm (Snapdragon), Broadcomm (BCM), Apple (A-series), Samsung (Exynos), NXP Semiconductor (various), Huawei (Mediatek), and HiSilicon (Kirin).
They've been promising this forever, and the biggest hiccup for gaming has always been ping. Linus gets right into this starting at 4:23 of the video. The testing module they lent him show that Shadow is adding only 5ms of latency to his machine running the game though he acknowledges his office is physically very near to the server center. This may not be ideal for hardcore competitive gaming, especially considering that this is an additional server center that becomes a middleman between the game servers and the gamer, but it's more than ample for any single player experience and any multiplayer that isn't acutely time-intensive. Impressive.
But...apart from intolerable latency to competitive multiplayer the biggest drawback is still nerfed graphics. Those internet users fortunate enough to have the best internet connections see a ceiling compression package delivery via Shadow of 50Mbps-70Mbps (Megabits), he says. This takes your PC-caliber graphics to Twitch-caliber streaming. After all, for 1080p@144Hz, your PC requires a transfer of 2389Mbps to express every single pixel. Not even Gigabit internet is sufficient.
Furthermore, despite that this streamed data is a coded compression, designed to be decoded and unpacked in real-time via hardware acceleration by the "Shadow Ghost" box on your end, there isn't a chance in hell that you're closing that gap, and besides, decoding itself operates on an imprecise dynamic strategy in order to look as close to the uncompressed source as possible (like mp4 and ac3 rips online for video/music). This is also merely 1080p at 144fps.
The other remaining question is how much will the subscription fee be to use their service? After all, all of those servers aren't cheap to build, power, and maintain. It was conspicuous to me that Linus didn't mention this, so I ran a quick Google:
And there's the rub. At the end of the day you can't cheat that you need the hardware somewhere in order to run these games. Shadow just diminishes the cost upfront with the cheaper box:
Shadow Ghost game streaming box set to launch in Q4, 2018 for $140
But at a minimum cost of $420/yr just to subscribe there is little incentive for rational consumers to participate. Three years comes out to a total of $1400. A $1400 gaming PC should last you three years. If you're that parched for cash it would make more sense to just buy your PC on a layaway plan instead (btw, please don't do this, you shouldn't need financing for anything less than a car).
********************************************************
Meanwhile, more leaks coming out of South Korea appear to confirm the insane, earlier leaks of Ryzen 3000 specifications are accurate:
AMD's Disruptive Ryzen 3000-Series: More Evidence It Exists
Last edited:
