After upgrading our systems, there are a few options to utilize the old PC in a meaningful way. Gifting them to someone who needs a PC is always a great option. But you can utilize them as additional gaming locations in your home as well. You can simply put your old PC next to your TV as an ultimate media player which enables play games through your new gaming rig, thanks to the local game streaming capabilities that Moonlight delivers.
Utilizing Nvidia Gamestream
Moonlight is an open-source game streaming client that utilizes Nvidia’s Gamestream infrastructure. Gamestream was actually developed to enable users to play the games that are installed on the PC on Shield devices. However, Moonlight enables almost all devices to act as Nvidia Shield devices.
Technically, you can think of Moonlight as an improved and specialized version of TeamViewer. The client devices send the inputs to the host PC to receive the output as video and audio stream. Moonlight’s improvements above TeamViewer include incredibly low latency, up to 4K 120 FPS streaming, up to 150 Mbps quality support, gamepad support, and many more details that enable gaming viable through the network.
Nvidia GPU is required on the host, but not on the client
Moonlight requires an Nvidia GPU on the host and GeForce Experience installed. You must activate the Gamestream option in the GeForce experience, then you can pair the devices via Moonlight on the client device. Then, the games will pop up on Moonlight’s interface. However, Nvidia does not officially support most of the games in Gamestream; you will have to manually add their .exe file on GeForce Experience on the host PC.
Moonlight enables many possibilities like couch-gaming in front of the TV, and it is way more customizable and stable compared to Steam’s integrated game streaming feature. If you have a spare PC that you don’t know what to do with it, you can try setting up a streaming infrastructure.
Just be careful about the network connection for both of the devices; avoid wireless and 100 Mbps connections at all costs.
Snap
sudo snap install moonlight