Many players especially pay attention to high FPS numbers while gaming. However, this counter often misrepresents the performance and quality of the game. In the end, many other details determine whether a game really runs well and is optimized. And with simple tips, you can find out whether your game is optimized or not.
Players often proudly show on Steam and other platforms how many FPS they can play their favorite titles with. These numbers often serve as comparison values for gamers to compare hardware or simply game performance. Decreasing or too low FPS numbers are often a sign for players that a game is not well optimized or that the hardware is simply too weak.
However, many players believe: If a game runs with surprisingly low FPS despite strong hardware, then the fault must lie with the developer and the game itself. Steam has now introduced a feature that allows you to display your hardware directly under your reviews.
But the popular FPS tracker obscures how well a game really runs and how optimized it is in the end. Because good optimization cannot be measured solely by how high the FPS number is. Ultimately, it is crucial whether the performance is consistent, whether the game handles the available resources well on the target hardware, and whether it is truly enjoyable to play in practice.
FPS numbers are not a metric for a well-optimized game, but at most an indication
What really matters? In fact, a game depends on many details, whether it not only runs “perceptibly” well, but also really does.
- Frametimes and consistency: Not only the number of frames per second counts, but also whether these frames are delivered at regular intervals. Irregular frametimes lead to micro stutters, even if the FPS number looks good on paper.
- CPU/GPU balance: A game may look good on the GPU, but can be slowed down by CPU limits, too many draw calls, or poor thread usage. Then the FPS number does not increase smoothly, even though the graphics card still has reserves.
- Streaming and load stutters: If assets, textures, or shaders are poorly loaded, the game feels “sluggish,” even if the average FPS is high. Such hitches are often felt to be worse subjectively than a slightly lower but stable value.
- VRAM and memory behavior: High or inefficient VRAM usage can lead to load stutters, texture problems, or sudden drops. A game might seem “optimized” even though it is unnecessarily costly in memory management.
- Image quality per performance: Good optimization also means that a game delivers as much visual quality as possible with a reasonable processing load. A title is not automatically better optimized just because it achieves more FPS if significant quality has to be sacrificed in the process.
In the end, it does not matter that you can play the game at 300 FPS, but it is also important that your computer does not sound like a jet engine because the game is overloading your hardware too much.
Simple tricks to test the optimization
If you want to know whether your game is well optimized, pay attention to both smaller and larger details:
- Does the game utilize multiple cores efficiently, or is one CPU core constantly at its limit?
- Is the graphics card usually highly utilized, without unnecessary drops?
- Do textures, objects, and shadows load fast enough, or are there sudden drops or loading issues?
- Does the game look good at acceptable performance, or does it require disproportionately high processing power?
A well-known developer shows what is possible when a game is properly optimized. The improvement in the FPS rate is remarkable. And it shows that it is worthwhile to bring a game optimized to the market. Because lack of optimization is a problem many modern games face: A developer shows what the secret of a good PC game on Steam is: Optimization
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