Just when you thought Steam had most of the features you could ask for, Valve has introduced more improvements to its Steam overlay, specifically the performance monitor. Along with displaying frame rate, the overlay can now distinguish between native FPS and AI-generated FPS – in other words, the additional frames provided via frame generation. At the moment, this supports Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR; there is no mention of Intel’s XeSS equivalent, which got frame gen in 2.0.

The performance overlay can also track a number of other metrics, including your CPU, GPU, and RAM performance. This isn’t too dissimilar to the built-in performance overlay found on Valve’s popular handheld device, the Steam Deck. Now gamers can track similar metrics on a Windows PC directly through Steam.

Valve supercharges the Steam overlay performance monitor

Generally speaking, most people using the performance overlay for Steam just use it to display in-game FPS. Now, Valve has turbo-charged the feature with a bunch of new metrics. A great addition for hardware benchmarking and PC gaming enthusiasts alike. As shown in this Steam blog post, the performance monitor can be split into five parts:

• FPS + DLSS/FSR Frame Generation
• FPS Graph
• CPU Performance Info
• GPU Performance Info
• RAM Info

It’s no secret that optimization on PC games is starting to rely more and more on techniques such as AI upscaling and frame generation. Users may think that developers are relying on this “too much,” but it looks like it’s here to stay. VRAM usage is another hot topic, especially now that we’re seeing games like Doom: The Dark Ages and upcoming Borderlands 4 asking for 8GB of VRAM as a minimum requirement. The overlay also tracks this, which is doubly important considering techniques like frame gen can eat up memory.

Valve says that these new metrics are “initially available on Windows PCs,” though it clarifies that “much of it will apply to other supported operating systems”. Some metrics that are not available on alternative operating systems have support planned for a later date – these are not mentioned by name in the blog post.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.