Steam Adds Frames Per Second Counter

Steam is getting a frames per second (FPS) counter and a few other new improvements, Valve has announced.

For now, the new feature is available only if you choose to participate in the Steam Client Beta, which you can do by simply going to Settings, then Account, and choosing the Steam Beta Update. One you downloaded the latest update, you can enable the FPS counter by going to Settings, then In-Game, and checking the box for "Show in-game frames/sec (FPS)." Once you do that, the next time you'll launch a game you'll notice a counter in the top left corner of your screen telling you how many frames per second your PC is pushing at any moment.

If you're playing all your games on Steam anyway, it's a really easy way to keep track of what your PC can handle and finding the balance between performance and graphics quality while fine-tuning the settings on a new game. As with all Steam Client Beta features, it's likely to roll out to all Steam users eventually.

The rest of the Steam Client Beta updates aim to improve capture and broadcasting performance for the recently released Steam Broadcasting, which much like Twitch, allows Steam users to watch their friends' games with just one press of a button.