14 DAY TRIAL // Valve recently updated the beta Steam client with new features and improvements. The new version of Steam beta comes about two weeks after the last update which brought some Big Picture related fixes and improved image quality of scaled video during playback in Steam.
However, the new update brings an important new feature that’s now available to all those who opted for the Steam beta client. According to Valve, the newest version should put an FPS counter to Steam Overlay.
Now players won’t have to use any third-party apps in order to learn how well some games run on their PCs. The new feature is only available to Steam beta client adopters, along with several other improvements mentioned in the changelog.
Another well worth improvement implemented in the update is the reduced CPU usage when drawing animated images or videos. Also, Valve claims they have fixed reloading settings values in Steam Overlay and the video playback performance regression on Mac OS X and Linux.
Lots of enhancements to capture performance have been added too
But these are not the only changes brought in the latest Steam client beta update. Lots of other improvements regarding the capture performance have been included as well. You can find below the rest of the fixes and enhancements delivered by Valve in the latest update for the Steam beta client:
- 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.
If you have already opted for the Steam beta client, you won’t have to do anything to get the update. As soon as you open Steam, the new version will automatically install on your PC.
Keep in mind that in order to activate the FPS counter, you need to head over to Steam / Settings / In-game and check the new box that appears on that tab (Show in-game frames/sec FPS).