Steam’s in-game overlay includes a real-time performance monitor that displays system metrics like CPU and GPU usage, memory consumption, frame rate, and frame generation. Designed for all skill levels, it offers both simple and detailed views through a customizable on-screen display. This tool helps gamers assess performance, identify bottlenecks, and optimize their experience without leaving the game. By integrating diagnostic data into gameplay, it provides a clear picture of how your system handles games and where improvements might be needed.
Steam’s in-game overlay now offers a powerful performance monitoring feature that provides players with real-time feedback on how their games interact with system hardware. Whether you’re gaming casually, troubleshooting stutters, or assessing your setup’s capabilities, this overlay shows useful insights right on your screen—no need to Alt-Tab or use third-party tools. The monitor displays a wide range of system metrics, including CPU and GPU usage, memory usage, frame rate, and frame generation stats. Each indicator is shown clearly through a customizable on-screen display that can be adjusted to suit the user’s preferences for detail and layout.

Steam’s overlay bar. (Source: Valve)
This performance monitoring tool is designed to support users of various skill levels and hardware configurations. For casual players, it offers a simple view of key data points, while more technically inclined users can explore detailed diagnostics. Once enabled, Steam displays these performance stats directly over your game, providing live updates as you play.
Understanding fps, frame generation, and latency
One of the most important metrics for measuring gaming performance is fps, or frames per second. This number indicates how often your game updates with a new frame and sends it to your monitor. A higher frame rate generally results in smoother gameplay. Historically, most gamers have regarded 60 fps as a gold standard for smoothness, with 30 fps as an acceptable minimum for many experiences. However, modern graphics techniques have added more complexity to what “fps” means.
Technologies like DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) from Nvidia and FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) from AMD add another layer to frame rate measurement by generating extra frames through artificial intelligence. When enabled, these frame generation tools produce additional frames that help smooth motion, but they do not improve input response time or game logic performance, which are linked to the actual base game fps.
Steam’s performance monitor is smart enough to recognize when frame generation is active. When this happens, it shows two fps values: the total output fps (which includes generated frames) and the actual game fps (showing how often the game engine is doing real work). This difference is especially useful for competitive players who care about latency, as well as for users wanting to see the real workload on their GPU or CPU.
To better understand how your game is performing, the overlay also displays minimum and maximum frame rates sampled over one-second intervals. These additional metrics help identify micro stutter, a phenomenon where a single long frame causes a visible hiccup despite an otherwise steady frame rate. When the lowest frame rate during a second drops significantly—usually less than half the average—Steam highlights it in red to show that a stutter probably occurred.
Graphing performance over time
Beyond just raw numbers, the performance monitor features a visual graph showing a rolling 90-second history of average fps and minimum fps. Green bars display the per-second average fps, while red markers highlight the concerning minimums that may cause stuttering. The graph automatically adjusts its vertical scale to reflect changes in performance, making it easier to see trends over time.
This visualization helps during gameplay segments in which players can’t monitor real-time stats—such as in fast-paced combat, transitions, or cinematic moments. Afterward, a quick look at the graph shows how stable your performance was and if specific parts of gameplay experienced frame drops. While occasional red markers are common and may happen during level transitions or asset streaming, consistent dips or prolonged drops often point to a need for further investigation into system load or game settings.
GPU load and video memory
In most modern systems, the GPU (graphics processing unit) is a key factor in gaming performance. Steam’s monitor tracks GPU usage by identifying the most active GPU engine—usually the 3D rendering engine on your main graphics card—and showing its utilization as a percentage. If your GPU is consistently near 100%, it might be the bottleneck for your game’s performance. If the value is much lower than expected, it could indicate a CPU bottleneck or a misconfiguration in your graphics settings.
If your GPU vendor supports it, Steam also shows the GPU temperature, usually from the hottest onboard sensor. Monitoring the temperature helps you understand thermal headroom and whether the GPU is throttling itself to stay cool.
Another key aspect of GPU performance is video memory usage. The monitor shows how much VRAM (video RAM) your game uses and how much is available. This includes both dedicated video memory and shared memory (which comes from system RAM). For discrete GPUs, most of the memory should be dedicated to VRAM. Integrated GPUs, however, rely on system RAM for all video tasks.
If your system exhausts dedicated video memory (for example, seeing values like 9.5/8GB), Steam highlights this in red. Running out of VRAM can cause noticeable performance issues, including longer load times, more stuttering, or even crashes. Sometimes, closing other GPU-intensive programs can free up memory. In other cases, lowering in-game texture resolution or draw distance may help reduce the demand.
Monitoring system RAM usage
Besides GPU memory, Steam’s overlay also displays how much system RAM is currently being used. This is especially important for games with large, open worlds or high-resolution assets. If your system runs out of physical RAM, it will start swapping data to your drive (especially if you’re on a hard disk), which can cause a sudden drop in performance.
The overlay helps you see when your RAM usage is getting close to its limit. If you’re nearing the total system memory—say, within 1GB—it might be time to close background apps or think about a hardware upgrade. Some performance issues, like long load times or in-game stuttering, are directly related to not having enough RAM.
Tracking CPU utilization and clock behavior
Modern processors often have multiple cores and variable clock speeds, making it hard to interpret performance with older methods like simple CPU usage percentages. Steam addresses this by using Microsoft’s Processor Utility metric, which considers both how much the CPU is active and how fast it’s running compared to its base clock speed.
The overlay shows two CPU utility values: One is the average across all cores, and the other is the highest utilization among individual cores. For example, if your CPU displays 26% / ↑138%, it means the workload is distributed lightly across the CPU, but one core is heavily engaged and increasing significantly. This second figure can be important for diagnosing CPU bottlenecks, especially in games that depend heavily on single-thread performance.
Along with utilization, Steam also shows CPU frequency readings—average clock speed and the peak clock on any one core. These numbers help determine if your processor is effectively boosting under load or if thermal limits or power caps are restricting its performance.
Wrapping it all together
Steam’s performance monitor is a valuable diagnostic and optimization tool for gamers of all levels. It integrates multiple layers of data—from fps and input latency indicators to hardware-specific stats like core speeds, temperatures, and memory usage—into a user-friendly, unobtrusive display that helps you understand how well your game is running. Whether you’re aiming for a smoother experience, seeking higher frame rates, or troubleshooting annoying stutters, the insights from this overlay can guide your decisions and help you identify the true causes of performance issues.
To enable it, simply go to Settings > In Game and modify the Performance Monitor settings. You’ll see various levels of detail, from a basic fps counter to a detailed diagnostics panel. As Steam continues to improve support across multiple platforms and adds compatibility with more GPUs and processors, even more players will be able to use this useful feature in the coming months.
For more information, see Steam Support: Understanding the In-Game Overlay Performance Monitor.
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