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I'm seriously considering switching over to a Shadow PC and downsizing my home computing needs. Reasons: - It's relatively cheap, starts under $200/yr. It woul

by bane 6y ago

I'm seriously considering switching over to a Shadow PC and downsizing my home computing needs. Reasons: - It's relatively cheap, starts under $200/yr. It would take years to equal the cost of an equivalent system. - Like most cloud services they'll upgrade the hardware over time. - I can log into my exact same workstation from anywhere, on any device and even pick up from where I last left off. - I can upgrade to more powerful GPUs if I need, up to absolutely state of the art 30xx level. The base level has a 1080 equivalent. - It has USB passthrough so I can use whatever I/O devices I want. - The virtual desktop has gigabit internet connectivity. Some downsides: - RAM as only 12GB - Disk starts at 256GB (but you can add more up to 2TB) - Windows 10 However....there are upgrade packages coming soon with up to 32GB RAM, better GPUs and more default storage. TBH, I have 10 year old laptops in the closet I could use with this that would suddenly make them viable systems again.

kbrackbill 6y ago
I've been using Shadow for the past few months as I've been on the road and didn't want to drag my gaming PC with me. Overall it's been a great experience. The biggest downside for my use case is that it's very sensitive to internet quality- internet that's totally fine for streaming video, browsing, etc will cause games to be unplayable on shadow since you need such consistent throughput and latency. Related to this, I haven't gotten USB passthrough (or the joystick forwarding) to work at all really, and I'm guessing that's also a connection quality issue. For your use case where you're using it at home to downsize I think you'd avoid all of these problems, assuming you have good internet at home.
girvo 6y ago
I used Parsec with an AWS GPU instance for gaming for a couple of years. As long as your connection is good and you don’t ever want to access it offline, I can recommend this paradigm!

by bane 6y ago

kbrackbill 6y ago

I've been using Shadow for the past few months as I've been on the road and didn't want to drag my gaming PC with me. Overall it's been a great experience. The biggest downside for my use case is that it's very sensitive to internet quality- internet that's totally fine for streaming video, browsing, etc will cause games to be unplayable on shadow since you need such consistent throughput and latency. Related to this, I haven't gotten USB passthrough (or the joystick forwarding) to work at all really, and I'm guessing that's also a connection quality issue. For your use case where you're using it at home to downsize I think you'd avoid all of these problems, assuming you have good internet at home.

girvo 6y ago

I used Parsec with an AWS GPU instance for gaming for a couple of years. As long as your connection is good and you don’t ever want to access it offline, I can recommend this paradigm!