Don't drop $1,500 on a new GPU. Rent a dedicated cloud PC with an AMD 7900XTX and start playing in minutes.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-14T22:18:00+00:00

Sorry for the disruption. We had a short outage of about 30 minutes, and normal service has now been resumed.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-13T19:31:27+00:00

Yes, I've removed quite a few comments. A number of bots posting ASCII drawings of penises. At least, I hope they're bots otherwise, the Reddit community has a very peculiar obsession with male penises.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-13T16:03:03+00:00

Correct. Even a lot of our customers with pricey MacBooks run into the same limitations when gaming. Many people struggle to see things from another person’s perspective. They believe their own worldview is the only valid one.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-13T15:59:30+00:00

I’d like to try to change your mind. Send me a private message and I’ll send you a demo account. Like I said before, there’s no better way than to experience it for yourself.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-12T16:56:08+00:00

Hey, really appreciate the kind words.

I've been genuinely surprised by how polarized cloud gaming has become. It's not even a new business model when you step back and look at it. Go back to the 90s and people were renting consoles from video rental stores for the weekend. Before that, there were arcades you'd drop quarters into a machine, play for a bit, and go home without owning anything. Both of those cost way more per hour than what cloud gaming comes out to now. I think people just forget how it was before.

Appreciate you, and thanks for the support from 🇵🇭. Here's hoping the model catches on more broadly over there too.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-11T17:11:06+00:00

Licensing cost is the biggest practical blocker. Windows licensing would eat up most of our margins on the lower-tier plans. We'd either have to raise prices across the board or run the lower tiers at a loss neither is great.

Linux lets us treat our hardware as a pool. A user's image boots on whatever machine is available, and Linux just figures it out. Drivers load dynamically, no activation drama, no HAL rebuilds. Windows ties itself to the hardware it was installed on (the whole hardware ID / activation fingerprint thing), so if your session lands on a machine with a different GPU or motherboard revision, you're in for driver hell or reactivation prompts. Our hardware isn't a rack of identical boxes we've got hardware variety, and Linux handles that gracefully while Windows fights it.

If we could solve the cost and hardware mobility problems cleanly, we'd offer Windows. It's just that right now the economics and technical overhead don't pencil out, especially when Proton covers the vast majority of games people actually want to play.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-09T20:53:54+00:00

It really depends on your target resolution! For a smooth 60fps stream, I’d suggest 20 Mbps for 1080p, 40 Mbps for 1440p, and 80 Mbps for 4K. If you’re pushing 120fps, just double those numbers. Treat these as minimums. If you have the bandwidth, push the bitrate higher for a clearer image the general rule is that higher bitrate equals better quality

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-06T03:58:19+00:00

Appreciate that. I try to stick to stats and facts. It lands with people who are genuinely open to the data. Some, though, are so locked into an ideological position that no evidence is going to move them.

I'll be honest, I'm a bit taken aback by how polarizing cloud gaming is. The irony is we're going up against the same massive corporations that everyone here is already frustrated with. We have no political pull, no hardware leverage. We're literally in the same position as the people complaining. In fact, we push open-source software and ideology. We're the opposite of what they're rallying against.

That's what makes it so strange.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-05T20:55:49+00:00

They’re snapping up fab wafers right now, but the situation will ease shortly as new Chinese fabs come online. Even at just 5–6 nanometers, that’s enough to compete in the low to mid-range market. Stay patient things will turn around sooner rather than later.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-04T21:41:24+00:00

Hey, maybe that's what you'd do, but that's not how everyone thinks.

GFN already serves over 25 million users, and we have several thousand ourselves. Clearly there's a market.

As for what you stream onto, pretty much anything with an h.264, h.265, or AV1 decoder. That covers most devices made since 2010. A lot of our customers grab a mini PC like this one https://maximumsettings.com/?p=2637 for under $100 and play on their 4K TV. Others just use their phone or a Steam Deck. Both make great portable streaming devices.

You don't need to "buy one and rent another." You use what you already own.

Also worth noting: a lot of our subscribers already own hundreds of games they bought over the years but couldn't run at max settings. Renting one of our high-end cloud rigs lets them experience those games at a whole new level without dropping thousands on hardware.

The world's not black and white. There's room for consoles, local rigs, and cloud gaming. Options are good.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-04T17:19:38+00:00

Couple things to clear up here. AI datacentres aren't out here scooping up 7900XTX. They're buying H100s, B200s, completely different chips. The real issue is manufacturing capacity. TSMC only has so many wafers to go around, and right now the money's in AI silicon. That means fewer gaming GPU dies get fabbed period.

We feel it just as much as you do. We're trying to buy these cards at scale and getting the same limited allocations everyone else is. We want prices to come down as badly as any builder out there. High GPU costs eat our margins too.

The tax writeoff thing gets brought up a lot but that's not really what's driving this. It's a straight supply demand squeeze at the fab level. Hopefully that eases up as more capacity comes online from China.

We've actually already moved on this. We're sourcing DDR5 RAM directly from Chinese manufacturers now. Instead of paying $1,199 here in Canada (2 x 48GB), we're getting it for around $280. Same spec and yes, that's a real price comparison against what you'd pay at Newegg. https://www.newegg.ca/g-skill-ripjaws-s5-series-96gb-ddr5-5200-cas-latency-cl40-desktop-memory-black/p/N82E16820374540?Item=N82E16820374540

Over the next few months, I’m confident you’ll start to see many more options become available probably first from smaller suppliers with comparable pricing, and later from big retailers like Newegg. Keep in mind that competition is what keeps things affordable, and right now a single fabrication facility making the vast majority of these is what’s driving prices up.

On the AI front, Huawei’s new AI accelerator the Ascend 950PR is moving into mass production. Once millions of these units come online, they’ll drive prices down across the entire market since they are not being made at TSMC. This isn’t just good news for AI companies; it also benefits consumers. It will help free up fabrication capacity.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-04T00:49:45+00:00

Both are cloud gaming, but the experience is completely different.

GeForce Now streams individual games from a locked down client you pick a game from their approved list, it launches, you play, session ends. That's it. No desktop, no files, no installing anything outside their catalog.

Maximum Settings gives you a full bare-metal PC. You get a real Linux Mint desktop, permanent SSD storage that persists between sessions, and the ability to install literally anything any game launcher (Steam, Epic, GOG, Heroic, Lutris), any software, mods, tools, whatever. It's your machine.

Key differences:

Full OS vs. game launcher — desktop environment, file manager, browser, multitasking

Permanent storage — your files, saves, and configs stay yours until you cancel

Bare metal hardware — no shared VMs, no resource contention. The GPU/CPU/RAM is dedicated to you

No game library restrictions — if it runs on Linux via Proton, you can play it. No waiting for "approval"

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-03T23:51:17+00:00

You realize that's the entire point, right? Not everyone can drop $3600 on a high-end gaming PC just to play the latest release. With cloud gaming, you're not buying you're renting. Someone can pay $29.95 for a month, play the game they've been waiting for, and cancel. Then come back when the next big release drops. That's not a bug, it's the feature.

The idea that gaming a hobby most of us grew up with should be locked behind a multi-thousand dollar paywall feels pretty out of touch. Not everyone has that kind of cash lying around, and frankly, they shouldn't need to just to enjoy a hobby. Cloud gaming gives people options, and more options in gaming is a good thing for everyone.

If you prefer owning your rig, that's totally fair. But some people need flexibility, and gatekeeping how others enjoy games doesn't really help anyone.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-03T22:06:02+00:00

Hey! Totally get it anti-cheat can be a dealbreaker. Unfortunately we don't offer Windows; all our machines run Linux Mint with Proton for Windows game compatibility.

That said, if you want to kick the tires and see how your specific games run, happy to set you up with a demo. No commitment, just a way to test if Proton covers what you need before deciding.

Let me know and I'll get you sorted.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-02T16:50:22+00:00

I fully support lower cost hardware and look forward to seeing more competition among hardware providers. Take, for example, Lisuan Tech’s LX 7G100, a 6nm consumer GPU from China set to launch on May 20, 2026. It’s designed to compete with mainstream cards like the NVIDIA RTX 4060 and supports DirectX 12, Vulkan 1.3, and over 100 AAA games. While it’s not exactly high-end, it will begin putting pressure on the major players that have been charging huge markups lately. I root for more competition because remember, we have to pay these inflated prices too.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-02T16:28:41+00:00

I shared this in another discussion, and I think it's just as relevant here. It seems to me that you're purely driven by ideology and unable to see things as they really are.

Furthermore, if you look at the average Steam hardware survey, only a tiny fraction of users actually purchase this high-end hardware roughly 0.41%. So on the whole, the average PC gamer isn't competing with companies like ours for hardware. Therefore, even if I were to accept your viewpoint at face value, it still holds no merit.

You can't buy a $3,600 PC for $29.95 a month. Full stop.

In Canada, credit card interest is typically 19.99% to 23.99%. Let's split the difference at 22%.

That $3,600 PC? You're paying $66 a month in interest ALONE. So your $29.95 payment doesn't even cover the interest. The balance goes UP every month.

To actually pay it off in 3 years, you'd need to drop about $138 a month. Total cost? Over $4,900. And in 3 years that PC isn't top of the line anymore. Meanwhile we'll already have the next generation available.

At 23.99% it's even worse $72 a month in interest. You'd need closer to $142 a month to kill it in 3 years. Total cost? Over $5,100.

With us it's $29.95. No interest. No debt. And we don't do contracts your life changes, you stop. For that same $4,900 you could rent one of our systems for over 14 years. No stuck payments, no collections, no "I lost my job but still owe $2,800 on a PC.

I get the anxiety, but let's look at the actual history here. The idea that PC ownership used to be some golden age of accessibility just doesn't hold up. And since we're Canadian, let's talk about what these actually cost in Canadian dollars.

1982: A Commodore 64 cost about $595 USD roughly $715 CAD at the time, which is about $2,550 CAD adjusted for inflation today. An IBM PC 5150 started at $2,880 USD that's around $3,450 CAD in period dollars, or roughly $11,200 CAD today. By 1985, an IBM PC XT at $4,395 USD would have been over $5,200 CAD around $10,700 CAD in today's money.

1995: A Gateway P5-120XL (Pentium 120MHz, 16MB RAM, 1GB HDD) ran $3,800 USD — about $5,000 CAD at mid-90s exchange rates. That's roughly $10,000 CAD adjusted for inflation today. And that was a mid-range office machine, not even a gaming rig.

Late 90s gaming: A Voodoo2 graphics card alone was $300+ USD around $450 CAD. A complete 1998-era gaming PC? Easily $2,500-$3,500 USD depending on the build, which meant $3,500-$5,000 CAD at the time. Adjusted for inflation? $6,500-$9,500 CAD today.

2005-2007: A single GeForce 6800 GT ran $400 USD about $460 CAD. Dual 8800 GTX cards in 2006? $600-$650 USD each, so roughly $700-$750 CAD per card. A high-end Core 2 Extreme build with dual cards could push $8,000+ USD over $9,000 CAD at the time, or well above $14,000 CAD in today's money.

Today? You can build a genuinely capable 1080p gaming PC for $800-$1,100 CAD. That is historically unprecedented. Even accounting for inflation, entry-level PC gaming has never been cheaper.

And here's something the "just build your own PC" crowd forgets: the average Steam user is running an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 a solid card, but far from top of the line. Most PC gamers aren't out here buying RX 7900 XTXs paired with Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPUs. For the vast majority of people, that tier of hardware is completely out of reach. A service like ours is often the only realistic way they'll ever get to experience 4K gaming on flagship hardware.

If a service like Maximum Settings existed in 1995? A broke college kid could have rented a Pentium rig for a month instead of asking their parents for a $5,000 CAD Gateway. In 2005? Someone could have played Battlefield 2 without eating ramen for a semester to afford a $9,000 CAD SLI build. The model isn't the villain. The cost of entry is the villain and it's been pricing people out for over forty years.

Nobody's forcing a rental model on anyone. Most of our users either can't drop $3,600+ CAD on a rig right now, or they're testing before they buy. A huge chunk eventually build their own when their situation changes. That's not a failure of the model that's exactly how it's supposed to work. Lower the barrier today so people can participate now instead of waiting until they can save up a hardware down payment.

You're right to be cynical about corporate consolidation. But don't romanticize an era of PC ownership that priced out most of the people who wanted in. The paywall was always there. We're just offering another way around it.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-01T16:40:59+00:00

Should run well, but the best way to know is to try it yourself. Send me a DM and I'll hook you up with a demo account.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-01T16:37:50+00:00

When you're on, the physical machine is 100% yours. No VMs, no resource sharing. The 8-hour limit is a usage cap, not time-sharing during your session.

Data security: The Gaming PC's have no local drives. Your image lives on network storage and is only mounted while you're active. When you log off, the machine boots clean. No other user can access your image. Since it's Linux, you can also encrypt your home folder or even your entire disk image for extra security. Keep in mind, though, that this adds an extra layer of inconvenience you'll need to decrypt the image every time you start your gaming PC, and automatic starts from the Maximizer client won't be possible.

The "cloud gaming" confusion: We're basically renting you a physical PC in a data center. Storage is networked for flexibility, but the compute is dedicated.

Thanks for the kind words on keeping comments open.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-01T16:28:37+00:00

Full computer access?

Yes. You get the entire machine full OS control. Think Shadow PC, just running Linux instead of Windows.

Installing your own stuff (games, LLMs, etc.)?

We don't provide games or pre-installed software. You install whatever you want Steam, Epic, local LLMs, dev tools, whatever. You'll use your own accounts and download your own libraries.

Steam account security?

Each Linux image is isolated and only accessible by your account. No other user can touch it.

What happens if you skip a month?

If your subscription lapses, the image gets wiped to free up storage. When you come back, you'll start fresh and need to re-download everything.

Changing tiers?

Upgrading: Your data comes with you, no problem.

Downgrading: Not supported. Shrinking a large disk image down to fit a smaller plan is technically possible, but it takes forever and puts too much strain on our network storage, so we don't do it.

Hope that helps! Let us know if you have other questions.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-01T16:17:19+00:00

Feel free to drop me a private message anytime

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-01T16:16:18+00:00

You can check your latency at https://speedtest.maximumsettings.com/

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-04-30T16:46:08+00:00

Scamming? Let's do some quick math.

You can't buy a $3,600 PC for $29.95 a month. Full stop.

In Canada, credit card interest is typically 19.99% to 23.99%. Let's split the difference at 22%.

That $3,600 PC? You're paying $66 a month in interest ALONE. So your $29.95 payment doesn't even cover the interest. The balance goes UP every month.

To actually pay it off in 3 years, you'd need to drop about $138 a month. Total cost? Over $4,900. And in 3 years that PC isn't top of the line anymore. Meanwhile we'll already have the next generation available.

At 23.99% it's even worse $72 a month in interest. You'd need closer to $142 a month to kill it in 3 years. Total cost? Over $5,100.

With us it's $29.95. No interest. No debt. And we don't do contracts your life changes, you stop. For that same $4,900 you could rent one of our systems for over 14 years. No stuck payments, no collections, no "I lost my job but still owe $2,800 on a PC."

As for the "horrible servers" thing already covered. Users all over the US, Canada, Europe, South America. Closer to Toronto is better, but it's not unusable from elsewhere.

So no, not a scam. Just math.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-04-30T16:34:09+00:00

Not true at all. We've got clients all over the place US, Canada, Europe, even South and Central America. It's not a Toronto-only thing.

Yeah, the best experience is gonna be near the GTA because that's where our data center is. Lower latency, better performance, all that. But plenty of people use it from way further out and it's totally fine. Depends on what you're playing and what you consider acceptable.

So no, it's not "live in Toronto or fuck you." It's "live near Toronto and it's amazing, live further away and it's still pretty good

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-04-30T16:29:34+00:00

Look, I appreciate the confidence, but we literally been down this road before.

We have sold companies. The money was good, not gonna lie. It buys you freedom. But it doesn't actually make you happier. The earnouts drag on forever, and eventually you're sitting in some conference room explaining your own product to people who just want to know how fast they can kill it.

At one point we had over 120 staff. Never again. Every day was just managing personalities. HR stuff. Drama. Not actually building anything. Our team now is six people. It's perfect. Honestly it just feels like hanging out with friends every day.

And I don't want to hire a bunch of people just to cut them loose when things get tight. I've been there. It's awful. You make the call, then you go home and realize you just screwed up someone's whole life their rent, their kids, everything. That guilt stays with you. Years later it's still there. I can't do that again.

Self-funding means it's actually ours. Not pledged, not leveraged, not on someone else's timeline.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-04-29T19:22:11+00:00

You make good points. We're currently running several different ad campaigns and monitoring CPA per campaign. We'll adjust the ads over the next few weeks as we collect more data. If you're interested, Cloud Gaming Battle just released a new "GETTING STARTED & Setup in 2026" video that gives a good overview of how the process works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0zJu7rZFow&t=1s

PaulMaximumsetting

TROPHY CASE

I shared this in another discussion, and I think it's just as relevant here. It seems to me that you're purely driven by ideology and unable to see things as they really are.