Let’s assume a modern AAA game streamed to a dumb terminal: what are the minimum specs for that terminal to run the game without hiccups (controlling for network bandwidth, of course)?
Testing with streaming at 1440p@144Hz from a cacyos host vm running sunshine to a cachyos physical client running Moonlight, the moonlight client used:
153.2MB RAM
2-3% of an i3-N305
24Mb/s (3MB/s)
15-20% of the iGPU
And none of that changed between running Autodesk Fusion with both a low and high polygon assembly, running a AAA game at 1440p@144Hz, or emulating a switch game at the same resolution and refresh rate.
The application being streamed is irrelevant to the resources used by the client.
The requirements for cloud gaming revolve around having the hardware to drive the local monitor, and having fast enough internet with low enough latency.
Notably, the game data is not loaded into RAM. In case it isn’t clear, those requirements are very low, by 2026 standards. If it can display video on the monitor you have, then it can probably stream a game.
I’ll defer to your expertise.
Let’s assume a modern AAA game streamed to a dumb terminal: what are the minimum specs for that terminal to run the game without hiccups (controlling for network bandwidth, of course)?
Testing with streaming at 1440p@144Hz from a cacyos host vm running sunshine to a cachyos physical client running Moonlight, the moonlight client used:
And none of that changed between running Autodesk Fusion with both a low and high polygon assembly, running a AAA game at 1440p@144Hz, or emulating a switch game at the same resolution and refresh rate.
The application being streamed is irrelevant to the resources used by the client.
Edit: Added GPU utilization.
What’s the iGPU?
The requirements for cloud gaming revolve around having the hardware to drive the local monitor, and having fast enough internet with low enough latency.
For example, here are Geforce Now’s minimum requirements: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/system-reqs/
There is some overhead involved in streaming, but the RAM requirements are low and certainly don’t change based on the game.
Ok interesting. 4gb RAM. But they’re also requiring a GPU that supports direct x v11. So there’s some rendering happening at the client?
That’s still going to make a dumb terminal quite expensive.
Notably, the game data is not loaded into RAM. In case it isn’t clear, those requirements are very low, by 2026 standards. If it can display video on the monitor you have, then it can probably stream a game.