How to Disable Steam Overlay and Increase FPS in Games

Every game has its own frame rate requirements, but to simplify, 60 frames per second is good for any genre. As it turns out, the Steam overlay was consuming a lot of power, offering features in return that most players don't use. Is this true? And how many additional frames can you get by disabling the Steam overlay? Let's break it down in this guide.

The overlay is part of the platform that opens over the game you've purchased and launched on Steam. By using the key combination SHIFT and TAB, you can quickly access the friend list, chat, achievements, in-game purchases, and built-in browser. All of this is done in-game, so you won't miss anything important and can immediately return to the game if necessary.

If you complete games 100%, the section in the center of the screen will help you check which achievement is up next, as well as show overall statistics when you click the All Achievements button.

This section contains all your friends. Here you can see who's online, what they are playing, or invite a friend to a cooperative game. This can be done in just a couple of clicks, which sets Steam apart from other platforms.

This section will display three guides for the game you are playing — the most popular or added to favorites. If you have a question about the game you're playing, you'll be able to quickly find an answer. These guides are created by players for players, so everything is accessible and understandable.

At the top left, there are clocks and several timers:

At the bottom of the screen, there are sections:

All of this minimizes exiting the game, staying online. If desired, you can even open YouTube and take a break from the game, watching a couple of fresh videos.

Now, launching games won't start an additional process and burden the system. How much this helps will be shown below with specific examples.

For tests, we chose 3 computers with different specifications. Games were selected based on the weakest one and availability in the library.

Specifications:

Choose basic presets: mainly all settings were on Low. Left everything else unchanged.

It's unlikely that the issue was solely the enabled overlay. The maximum we could achieve was 76 FPS, and the average didn't surpass 55 frames per second.

By disabling the overlay, we managed to raise the average to 58 FPS, which is still not enough for a fast-paced shooter, but for Resident Evil 2 it's quite a decent result. True, the picture sometimes became too blurry, but we managed to maintain performance.

After setting everything to the minimum, we observed an interesting scene. The frame rate seemed fine, but the game often lagged, failing to load in time.

To get an average value, we had to wait about 15 minutes. Every movement caused minor freezes, burdening the system. The enabled overlay noticeably took away the already small power, resulting in an average of 37 FPS.

Without the Steam overlay, the average rose to 42 FPS, which pleasantly affected the gaming experience. Minor jitters disappeared and it was noted that the game became more responsive to controls.

The game turned out to be quite harsh and demanding on weak hardware. With the overlay enabled, we managed to achieve an average of 27 FPS, which is very low, as any construction or action immediately takes away power and causes animation jitters.

Without the additional features of Steam, the game showed a stable 32 FPS, with a maximum drop to 19 frames per second. There were drops even lower, but they occurred during loadings, which was observed on other equipment as well.

Specifications:

The system set most settings to medium values, slightly raising minor items to high. We changed the maximum number of frames (to 120 FPS) and turned off vertical synchronization to see jumps in both minimum and maximum values.

With the overlay enabled, a drop to 59 FPS was noticeable. On average, this parameter was at 91 FPS.

With the overlay disabled, the numbers noticeably increased. The drop was to 74 FPS (to 47 frames during level loadings), and the average value settled at 99 FPS. If nothing dynamic was happening in the game, a stable 115 FPS could be observed.

Chosen presets — High. Vertical synchronization is turned off, and the maximum frame threshold is set at 120 FPS. Triple buffering is disabled.

With the overlay enabled, the system wasn't heavily loaded in this game. On average, there were 103 FPS, although sometimes there was a drop to 70 FPS.

With the overlay disabled, the game consistently stayed at 109 FPS. The maximum drop was to 84 FPS.

In the game, it was necessary to experiment with the settings to get a more stable picture. You can see the chosen quality in the screenshot above. A limit of 120 FPS was set, but it was not possible to reach it during the gaming session.

Despite more refined settings, compared to other games, Sons of the Forest did not provide stable frames. The maximum value stopped at 96 FPS, the minimum value was observed at 35 FPS. On average, the game delivered 61 frames per second, if nothing much was touched.

The optimization in the game leaves much to be desired. With the overlay disabled, it was possible to squeeze a maximum of 99 FPS from the game. Meanwhile, the average value did not exceed 65 frames per second. The minimum value stopped at 35 FPS, and it remained unclear what the system responded to (we did not enter a cave at that moment, and nothing global changed either).

Specifications:

Maximum settings chosen, vertical synchronization turned off.

With the overlay enabled, the game shows a stable 70 FPS, with a maximum of 75 frames per second. The minimum peak was at 20 FPS, during loadings, but on average it did not drop below 25 frames.

If you disable the overlay, you could get an average of 75 FPS, and the maximum value raised to 180 frames per second. This is enough for comfortable gameplay, although it won't save you from random bites from the infected.

Maximum settings chosen — Ultra. Left everything else unchanged.

Despite the game reaching a maximum of 220 FPS, the minimum stopped at 62 frames per second. The average was set at 110 FPS. And this is with the overlay enabled.

Disabling the overlay, no noticeable changes were observed. On average, we got 92 FPS, although we were in the same location and took the same path.

The game really lacks optimization. With maximum settings, the game starts to behave strangely.

With the overlay enabled, the game displayed a range from 70 to 76 FPS, which is very little to assess the impact of Steam. But we got this result, see no reason to hide it.

Disabling the overlay, we did not notice any significant changes. There was a drop to 20 FPS, but most likely, it was just an aborigine running by. On average, it was 68 FPS, which is comfortable, considering the beauty that could be observed at maximum settings.

Disabling the Steam overlay will not give you an additional 120 FPS, but it will help increase the frame rate by almost 10%. If you actively use Steam's features, there's no need to disable the overlay. On the other hand, if you don't care about the additional platform functions and you just want to comfortably spend time in your favorite game, then you can confidently remove the check in the settings. Such changes will help increase the frame rate on weak and medium computers, but you won't feel the difference on a powerful device. The optimization of the game plays a major role in stable and high FPS.