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As long as humankind endeavors to play games on PCs, it’s the eternal question: What’s my frame rate, in frames per second (fps)? We want to know because we spent all this money on our hardware. Although a game might feel fluid, we want to know the exact number. For example, if we’re right at 50fps, we might turn down some settings to bump it to 60fps. If we’re at 120fps, it’ll bring a smile to our faces, knowing we spent our money wisely.
To find out what your in-game frame rate is, you can deploy a variety of free utilities. They all have pluses and minuses, but they all work well and will let you enjoy your PC games, knowing exactly what kind of performance you’re getting.
Xbox Game Bar
This is easy to try as it’s likely already installed on your system if you’re running Windows 10 or 11, which is almost all PC gamers. All you have to do to use it is press Windows Key + G, and you’ll see it appear at the top of your screen.
Don’t let the “Xbox” in the title fool you; the Game Bar is very useful for PC gaming.
Credit: Microsoft
From there, you just have to click the Performance tab, which is indicated with a PC monitor and a line graph, and a window appears asking what you want to monitor in real time. You can toggle various options for memory, CPU, and GPU usage—and, of course, frames per second. Once you select what you want to view, you can minimize the applet just to show four stats: CPU/GPU/Memory use and fps.
The Xbox Game Bar features a lot of useful monitoring options.
Credit: Microsoft
Once your settings are in place, you can move the tiny window anywhere on-screen or dock it to either side of your display. You will need to have a game running to see frames per second, but if you run it during regular Windows operation, you can use it to monitor your CPU and memory usage. Once a game runs, the FPS indicator lights up like a Christmas tree.
Steam Overlay
Everyone’s favorite service for downloading games now includes a built-in fps monitor, but spoiler alert—it’s so tiny that it can be hard to read on high-resolution panels. To enable it, you must open Steam, go to the word “Steam” at the top, and select Settings.
Valve doesn’t offer a ton of options other than using a high-contrast color, which you should use as the default grey is kind of dim.
Credit: Valve Software
From there, just scroll down to “In-Game, ” note the “In-game FPS counter” option on the middle-right, and turn it on. When you fire up a game, you’ll see a teeny, tiny fps counter in the upper-right-hand corner. Pro tip: enable the high-contrast option to make it stand out more.
Enable the high-contrast overlay for better visibility.
Credit: Valve Software
Nvidia GeForce Experience
If you have an Nvidia GPU, you must download the optional GeForce Experience software to get an in-game overlay. You will need to register an email address with Nvidia to use it, which is annoying, but the company says this is because your info is saved in the cloud and can be transferred to any system when you log in. We don’t like it either, but we use the Shadowplay software to record game clips, so to us, it’s worth the minor annoyance. Also, note that you can use the Xbox Game Bar to record your gaming clips, so Shadowplay isn’t as necessary as it used to be.
GeForce Experience offers a useful in-game overlay.
Credit: Nvidia
Once installed, open GeForce Experience and click the “gear” icon at the top of the main page. From there, scroll down slightly to “In-Game Overlay” and click “Settings.” You’ll see several options for items included in the overlay.
Toggling the frame counter is as simple as selecting it and choosing a corner of your panel for it.
Credit: Nvidia
The only one we’re interested in here is the “fps” setting, so click that and then click where you want to appear on-screen. Note if you choose either of the lower left- or right-side options, it will appear in Windows and make the system tray or Windows button difficult to use.
The GeForce Experience fps overlay comes only in company green, which makes it easy to read at a glance.
Credit: Nvidia
Radeon Overlay
Owners of AMD GPUs can also enable a customizable overlay that displays various metrics in-game. All you have to do to enable it is right-click your desktop and choose the option at the top: AMD Radeon Software. It’s installed with your GPU drivers, so it’ll already be enabled on your PC.
The Radeon Adrenalin software provides a smorgasbord of options and metrics to track.
Credit: AMD
The software will open from there, and you must click “Performance” at the top. This will allow you to toggle the overlay on/off and choose which metrics you would like to be tracked. AMD provides many options here—more than with any other utility—and you can also use a slider to adjust the polling interval for how often the metric is measured. Once you enable “fps,” you can close the menu. Once you’re in-game, press Ctrl+Shift+O to toggle the performance overlay. Thanks to Graya Overload on YouTube for the screenshot on this one.
MSI Afterburner
MSI Afterburner is the OG because it’s been used to monitor all kinds of system-related metrics for many years. Though you have to jump through a few small hoops to enable it, it allows you to track almost every value imaginable from your entire system, so it’s widely seen as an invaluable tool for monitoring your gaming performance. First, download it, and note you’ll also have to install RivaStatistics, which is included in the package. Once it’s running, open it up, and you’ll see your GPU being monitored.
You can choose from several different skins.
Credit: MSI
Click the “gear” icon in the lower middle, then navigate to “monitoring.” This section can be tricky because you can select a value in the never-ending menu of options, but just selecting it won’t put it on the on-screen display, or OSD. So choose an option such as “framerate” (noted by the check mark that appears) and then make sure the box below labeled “show in On-Screen Display” is also checked.
You can choose from a ton of options to monitor, including fps of course.
Credit: MSI
If you’ve done it correctly, the next time you fire up a game, the values you selected appear in the upper left-hand corner of your game in easy-to-read text.
The overlay is easy to read and you can make it as exhaustive or simple as you prefer.
Credit: MSI
Conclusion
These are the easiest options to use today for monitoring your in-game fps, but the choice is up to you. There is no single “best” option, so try them all out and see which one you prefer. If you just want your fps, Steam’s overlay is the easy option, assuming your game is even on Steam. If you want more info, the Xbox Game Bar is unobtrusive and customizable, making it another great option. Owners of Nvidia and AMD GPUs might wish to experiment with their manufacturers’ options, as both are useful. However, if you want a brand-agnostic tool that can also monitor a ton of CPU and GPU metrics, it’s hard to beat MSI Afterburner.