Steam now shows you how many 'fake frames' your games are generating

Frame generation is a contentious topic among PC gamers, with some vehemently opposed to the idea of "fake frames" and others embracing the free performance boost.

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Technologies such as NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) have ushered in this debate among PC gamers, and if you are still on the fence about whether or not it's good to turn on in your new game, Steam will now show you the difference between the "fake frames" being on and off.

The new feature comes with the latest update to the Steam Client, which is now available. However, Valve does state in the patch notes that this is the "first version" of the new feature, and focuses on "Windows users and on the most common GPU hardware."

As explained in the new post on the Steam Community website, there are different "levels of detail" with the new performance monitor features. Users can select from four levels of detail: Single FPS Value, FPS Details, CPU & GPU Utilization, and FPS, CPU, GPU & RAM Full Details.

The updated feature now provides standard performance monitoring metrics that were otherwise obtained by downloading third-party performance tracking software, such as MSI Afterburner. Those metrics are now baked into Steam, making performance monitoring much easier.

What is probably the biggest difference between Steam's new performance monitoring and third-party software is the client's ability to differentiate between generated frames, or "fake frames," versus normal rasterization.

"The new performance overlay will show you frame rate values, similar to the old FPS counter, but it can also break out generated frames from DLSS or FSR vs actual game frame rate. It can show you min/max single frame values and a graph of frame rate over time. Additionally, it will show you CPU performance information, GPU performance information, and system memory usage information. These pieces of data can be useful to understand the causes of bad game performance whether that be a slow CPU, GPU, or too high graphics settings that are over subscribing your video or system RAM," writes Valve

How to Turn it On

• Settings > In Game and locate the new Performance Overlay section