These Are the Only PC Game Performance Stats I Monitor, Here's Why

howtogeek.com:

Like many other PC gamers, I have a list of favorite in-game performance stats I monitor in every game. These help me understand which settings I need to tweak to get the best performance out of my games. Here's how you can do the same.

Why Monitor Game Performance Stats Anyway?

First and foremost, most of the time, I just want to check the overall performance in frames per second (FPS). Next, I like to have performance stats on-screen while tweaking visual settings to check overall performance and the impact of individual options on the frame rate.

Monitoring in-game performance metrics is great for spotting bottlenecks, whether on the GPU or CPU side. You can do this by watching the usage percentage of your graphics card and CPU.

Another use case is when I notice in-game stuttering. If gameplay doesn't feel smooth, you can turn on the frame time graph and see if it shows large frame time differences in the form of frame time spikes.

In-game performance stats can also display your CPU and GPU thermals and the amount of GPU memory used. This is useful when you’ve got a GPU with 8GB or less vRAM and want to see whether you've maxed out video memory by applying visual options like high texture quality. You can also show the total amount of RAM used, the amount of RAM used by the game you’re playing, the amount of power used by the CPU and GPU (handy when overclocking or undervolting your CPU or GPU), real-time clocks of your GPU and CPU, and a bunch of other stats.

That said, I don’t monitor each and every stat available. I’ve got a default in-game performance stats suite that I use in most games, which I occasionally tweak for specific bottleneck-hunting scenarios.

GPU Usage Percentage, Temperature, and Power

GPU usage percentage and frame rate are the most critical in-game performance stats. If your GPU usage is in the high nineties—95% and higher—you’re fine, and your graphics card is working at its optimal maximum. As you can see in the screenshot