A Steam Client update has rumors circulating about an FPS estimate feature for Valve’s game client, which could arrive ahead of the Steam Machine’s release date.
Found on the Reset Era forums, new strings appeared in an apparent Steam Client update, which include a “Framerate Estimater” that looks at the performance of your computer’s CPU, RAM, and GPU, with values for “saved hardware” by game name, and a training game option.
These FPS charts could be part of a hardware configuration tool that analyzes your rig and tells you roughly what to expect from today’s PC games. It sounds like an internal version of something like System Requirements Lab’s tool, but for Valve’s Steam client exclusively.
There’s no confirmation from Valve over how this system could work yet, or what it would look like when comparing its hardware to more general desktop and laptop configurations; however, it would give consumers a rough idea of the FPS values they could expect natively and (hopefully) when factoring in Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS, too.
Ultimately, it will come down to native performance against upscaled/assisted performance. Should these Steam FPS charts appear on a game’s store page from the client, they would hopefully include accurate native and assisted figures.
An overdue feature for the PC gaming market
We’ve had FPS estimate tools as PC gamers for over 20 years, with the aforementioned System Requirements Lab existing since 2005. Considering Steam Machine Verified games only need to hit 30 FPS at 1080p to earn the green tick, it will be interesting to see how these alleged graphs are displayed ahead of purchasing a game.
Up until now, the traffic light system for the Steam Deck has worked fairly well, but it hasn’t been perfect. Verified (Green), Playable (Yellow), Unsupported, and Unknown have given buyers a rough guide, but with no actual idea of what framerates could be expected.
For some people, 30 FPS could be just about playable. Other PC gamers would argue that 60 FPS should be the bare minimum. A rough graph under the page linked to what hardware you have would take the guesswork out, since right now the only thing indicating performance is other players’ Steam reviews, which are hit-or-miss at the best of times. Standardization could solve this if it’s done right.
