Steam's new Steam Deck framerate graphs are good news for handheld players, though I wouldn't fully trust the numbers yet

Valve has introduced a new framerate estimator for the Steam Deck, providing gamers with more precise performance expectations. These graphs, which can be found under the Steam Deck Compatibility details on the Steam Store, display how many frames-per-second that a game has been recording on real players' handhelds, both OLED and original LCD models.

The purpose of this update is to set more accurate performance expectations than the existing Verified, Playable, and Unsupported ratings provide. However, Valve acknowledges that the displayed results may be skewed by V-Sync treachery, which can force games into running at unrepresentative framerates when the anti-screen tear setting is enabled by default.

Valve's own game, Mortal Shell II, appears to fall victim to this phenomenon, with the OLED Steam Deck showing it averaging around 45fps, while the LCD Deck shows around 30fps. While the concept of providing more specific performance data is appreciated, Valve emphasizes that there is still work to be done. Currently, the verification ratings can still serve as decent guidelines for performance, but game-specific framerate data will be much more illustrative.

Valve also mentions that they aim to extend this update to cover more devices than just the Steam Deck, prompting customers to opt-in to providing anonymized framerate data through the Steam desktop client.