Steam has unveiled a new in-game monitoring tool designed to help players identify the root causes of poor PC gaming performance.
In a blog post, developer Valve detailed that the new performance overlay not only displays framerate data like the traditional FPS counter but also "distinguishes between frames generated by DLSS or FSR and the actual game framerate." This feature arrives just as the Steam Summer Sale kicks off.
"It can display min/max single-frame values and a framerate timeline graph," Valve explained. "Additionally, the overlay provides CPU and GPU performance metrics, along with system memory usage, offering valuable insights to determine whether performance issues stem from a CPU or GPU bottleneck, or graphics settings that are overwhelming your video or system RAM."
Here is a composite screenshot illustrating all four current overlay options. Keep in mind that only one can be active at a time—we have combined them here for easier comparison of the different settings: FPS Single Value, FPS Details, CPU & GPU Utilization, and the comprehensive FPS, CPU & RAM Full Details.
To activate the new overlay or modify its size and placement, navigate to Settings -> In Game and locate the Performance Overlay section.
Valve described this as "a first step" in helping Steam users better analyze their game and system performance, noting that additional data points will be integrated into the overlay in future updates.
Steam, the leading digital game distribution platform for PC gamers, recently surpassed its own concurrent user milestone, exceeding 40 million players for the first time in March 2025.
The platform has since set another record, reaching 41,239,880 simultaneous users and eclipsing the previous weekend’s peak of 40.2 million players.
While these figures include users who are idle—meaning Steam is open but not actively in use—the number of players engaged in games also climbed to a new high of 13.2 million.
Valve has recently refuted claims of a "major" data breach on its Steam platform, asserting that there was "NOT a breach" of Steam’s systems. With the growing frequency of data incidents and over 89 million active Steam accounts, users had legitimate concerns about a potential security compromise.
