Re: TIL - Steam FPS

Anyway, the new Steam performance monitor is now live and available to
non-beta users. Update Steam (or just fully Quit and then restart the
app so it will update automatically) and you'll get it.

To enable it, go into Steam settings -> In Game. Scroll down to the
"Pverlay performance monitor" section. Change the "show performance
monitor" from OFF to whichever location you want, set a toggle key (I
used CTRL + / myself), and then select the performance detail level.*

Go into a game, hit your selected toggle, and it'll appear on-screen.

It's not bad; even with maximum options it's fairly unobtrusive. It's
biggest problem is a lack of CPU temperature monitoring (something
many people have pointed out already, so I'm sure Valve will add it in
soon). It in no way compares to a dedicated third party app (like
Afterburner) but as a quick-n-dirty way to see what's going on 'under
the hood' while playing games, it's good enough.

I tried it out on a number of my PCs and it was fun seeing where and
why the different laptops and computers were struggling with the same
game. Unsurprisingly, in most cases it was the GPU that was the issue
rather than the CPU. Even on a ten-year old PC, our processors are
often more than sufficient for most games. It's something I've known
(and experienced) for years, but having the monitor built into Steam
where I could very easily compare between machines really pushed home
that fact.

(Other than GPU, limited RAM/VRAM and thermal throttling were the
other major culprits for slow-downs).

Good job, Valve, on adding another useful feature to Steam. GOG, Epic,
the others: you've got another thing to catch up on!






* official announcement and details here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/500576552635859540