The latest beta version of the Steam client is out today and comes with many good little tweaks and a very anticipated new feature. This version of the Steam beta introduces a FPS counter to the Steam Overlay. That's a function that many people wanted implemented to Steam considering that, until now, users who wanted to keep track of the performance of their system within a game had to install external software, like Fraps to say one.
Outside of this new feature, the update is mainly focused in bug fixing and performance tweaking especially regarding the Broadcast function (as to be expected it being the most recent addition to the client).
Following, you'll find the complete update notes.
GeneralAs you can easily read in the comment section of the announcement (that you can find here), people are very excited about the FPS counter implementation. PC gamers love to have their FPS high and their temperatures low after all. This addition will help them monitor the FPS situation in order to optimize the game experience for their own hardware.Broadcast
- Reduced CPU usage when drawing animated images or videos
- Fixed video playback performance regression on Mac OS X and Linux
- Added FPS counter to Steam Overlay
- Fixed reloading settings values in the Steam Overlay
- Improved capture performance in D3D9 games
- Improved audio/video synchronization
- Improved automatically adjusting video encoding bit rate when a change in available upload bandwidth is detected
- Fixed opening the broadcast watch page from client UI (friends list, invite chat message, etc.) in the Steam Overlay
- Improved capture performance in OpenGL games when hardware support is enabled on machines with newer Nvidia GPUs
- Added first time use and other UI to Big Picture mode
- Fixed first friend invite to a broadcast sometimes getting dropped
The improvements and fixes on the broadcast system are welcome as well. Until now, the Steam broadcasting is not a hugely popular feature but it's starting to gain steam (pun intended).
What you think of this update? Will you take advantage of the new FPS counter or you'll stick to whatever system you already use? Let us know in the comments!