FPS isn't merely for bragging rights. If it'south too depression, your gameplay suffers. If it'southward consistently high, you might be able to crash-land upwards your settings for a more visually pleasing experience. Here are several means you can bank check your PC game'due south FPS.

Information technology'south easier than ever to display a PC game's FPS. Steam at present offers a built-in FPS display, as does NVIDIA via its GeForce Experience software. The game video recorder FRAPS is also still around to assist you display FPS in games if you're not using Steam or NVIDIA. At that place are fifty-fifty tools that will let yous monitor FPS in UWP games on Windows x. And once you know what kind of FPS you're getting in a games, you tin get to work on improving your gaming performance.

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Steam's In-Game Overlay

Valve recently added an FPS counter to Steam'south in-game overlay. In Steam (while no games are running), just head to Steam > Settings > In-Game and and so option a position for the FPS brandish from the "In-game FPS counter" dropdown.

Look at the corner of the screen you chose while playing a game and yous'll meet the FPS counter. Information technology always appears on top of the game itself, but it'south fairly pocket-sized and unobtrusive.

steam fps overlay

You lot may be able to get this feature working for not-Steam games, likewise. Add a game to your Steam library by opening the "Games" menu and choosing "Add a non-Steam game to my library." Launch the game through Steam and the overlay may work with it, depending on the game.

NVIDIA GeForce Experience

If you lot take recent NVIDIA graphics hardware that supports ShadowPlay, you can also enable an in-game FPS counter via NVIDIA GeForce Feel. In the app, click the "Settings" push.

In the "Share" section, make sure sharing it enabled and then click the "Settings" button there.

In the Settings overlay, click the "Overlays" push button.

In the "Overlays" window, select the "FPS Counter" tab and then click one of the four quadrants to choice where you want your FPS counter.

If you use GeForce Experience, yous tin likewise use NVIDIA's game profiles to automatically choose the NVIDIA-recommended settings for different games to run best on your graphics card. NVIDIA sees this as a fashion to optimize games and brand them expect better without having you tweak and test a game's graphics options the old-fashioned way.

Use the Game's Built-in Options

Many games accept built-in FPS counters you lot can enable. Depending on the game you're playing, this pick may sometimes be difficult to discover. It might be easiest to just perform a web search for the proper noun of the game and "show FPS" to find out if a game has a built-in FPS option and how to enable it. You could besides try exploring the game's options yourself. Depending on the game, you may be able to enable FPS in a variety of ways:

  • Video or Graphics Options. At that place may be a "Evidence FPS" selection on the game's video or graphics settings screen. This option may exist hidden behind an "Advanced" submenu.
  • Keyboard Shortcut. Some games may have this pick hidden away behind a keyboard shortcut. For example, in Minecraft, you can tap F3 to open the debug screen. This screen shows your FPS and other details.
  • Console Commands. Many games have built-in consoles where you can type commands. In some cases, you lot may have to utilize a special startup option to enable the console before it becomes available. For example, if yous're playing DOTA 2, you can pull upward the developer console (y'all'll take to enable it first), and run the cl_showfps 1 command to activate an on-screen FPS counter.
  • Startup Options. Some games may require a special startup pick you need to activate while launching the game. You can do this by modifying the game's desktop or Start bill of fare shortcut. In a launcher like Steam or Origin, you lot can besides go into a game's properties and change its options from in that location. In Steam, right-click a game, select Properties, click Set launch options under the General tab, and enter the options the game requires.
  • Configuration Files. Some games may require yous enable a hidden option buried in some sort of configuration file. Even if a game doesn't require this, yous may exist able to beneift from this. For example, DOTA 2 players who always want to encounter their FPS could modify the game's autoexec.cfg file to automatically run the cl_showfps 1 command each time the game starts.

FRAPS

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Until this characteristic was implemented in software like Steam and GeForce Experience, PC gamers often used FRAPS to display to display an in-game FPS counter. FRAPS is primarily a game-video-recording app, only yous don't have to record your games to apply its FPS counter.

If you don't use Steam or NIVIDIA's GeForce Experience—and your game doesn't have a congenital-in FPS counter choice—you can give FRAPS a try. Install it, launch it, and click the FPS tab to access the overlay settings. The FPS counter is enabled by default and pressing F12 will bring it upwardly in the upper left corner of your screen. Use the settings on the correct side of the "FPS" tab to change the hotkey, specify a unlike screen corner, or hide the overlay.

Once you've fabricated your settings, y'all should go out FRAPS running, but you lot can minimize it to your system tray. Y'all can then press F12—or whatever hotkey you set up up—to show and hide the FPS counter.

Image Credit: Guilherme Torelly on Flickr