Valve's Steam Overlay Adds Performance Diagnostics

Steam has introduced a new in-game performance monitor designed to help players pinpoint the causes of poor PC gaming performance.

In a blog post, developer Valve detailed that this new performance overlay displays framerate data, similar to the traditional FPS counter, "but it can also distinguish between frames generated by upscaling technologies like DLSS or FSR and the actual game framerate." This launch coincides perfectly with the ongoing Steam Summer Sale.

"It can display minimum and maximum single-frame values alongside a frametime graph," Valve added. "Furthermore, it provides CPU and GPU performance metrics, as well as system memory usage. This data is invaluable for diagnosing performance issues, whether they stem from a CPU or GPU bottleneck, or graphics settings that are consuming too much video or system RAM."

Below is a screenshot illustrating all four current overlay options. Please note that only one can be active at a time—we've combined them here to clearly show the differences between the settings: FPS Single Value, FPS Details, CPU & GPU Utilization, and the comprehensive FPS, CPU & RAM Full Details view.

To activate the new overlay or modify its size and position, navigate to Settings -> In Game and locate the new Performance Overlay section.

Valve described this as "a first step" in helping Steam users better analyze their game and system performance, with plans to integrate additional data points into the overlay in future updates.

Steam, the leading digital game distribution platform for PC gamers, recently shattered its own concurrent user record, surpassing 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 milestone of 40.2 million set just the weekend prior.

While this figure includes users who are idle—meaning Steam is open but not necessarily in use—the number of players actively in a game also reached a new peak, climbing to 13.2 million.

Valve recently refuted claims that its Steam platform experienced a "major" data breach, stating definitively that there was "NOT a breach" of Steam's systems. Given the alarming increase in data breaches and the fact that over 89 million people have Steam accounts, users had legitimate concerns about a potential security incident.