A new Steam client update dropped recently that adds some rather useful features to the already competent digital storefront and games library. Valve now allows gamers to monitor their PC’s gaming performance in-game with a built-in performance overlay.
If it wasn’t obvious, Valve says the new feature is “designed to help you understand how your PC is performing and how it is impacting your game’s performance.” No more wondering about dropped frames or if you’re running out of video memory.
Gaben gives Steam gamers more info
Steam already allowed limited performance monitoring with an in-game FPS (frames per second) counter that could be toggled via the overlay to appear in the corner of your game.
This update expands on the information offered, adding the ability to tell the difference between locally rendered frames and ‘fake’ generated frames as a result of Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) or AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR).
Following the update, you now have four levels of monitoring available from the overlay – single FPS value, FPS details, CPU & GPU utilisation, and FPS, CPU, GPU, and RAM. They offer what you’d expect from the names and can be kept small on your screen or expanded to reflect more info if you need to troubleshoot a performance issue.
You’ll also be able to customise what your performance metrics look like on the fly, from changing the text size, background opacity, and colour saturation, to adding real-time performance graphs.
If this sounds like something you’ve been waiting for, open Steam and head to Settings > In game, and look for the Performance Overlay section. There, you can change the position and assign it to a hotkey for easy access.
Valve isn’t finished yet. It said it plans to add even more info to the overlay to help in the case of “bad hardware performance scenarios, and to show a larger summary of your game’s performance in the overlay itself when you hit shift-tab.”
