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A new Steam Client Beta is out with reduced CPU use, DPI fixes and more

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The Steam client continues to improve with the latest Steam Client Beta. It includes some overdue optimizations!

The Valve developers have managed to reduce the CPU and battery use of Steam when it's running in the background, hopefully giving us all a smoother experience.

Also, the Steam Overlay finally got a little bit smarter. It should now be aware of a monitor's DPI and scale properly for games running at higher resolutions.

There's also some updates to Steam Input, including a new layers feature for Action Sets which they say works like Photoshop layers, allowing for quick modifications.

On top of that, they also fixed the DS4 Gyro when streaming over a Steam Link.

See the full update notes here. Lots of little improvements do go a long way, I hope to see them continue to improve the Steam client when using higher resolutions. On Linux, the Steam client doesn't scale at all and it's quite annoying if you have a 4K monitor.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Beta, Steam
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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TheSHEEEP Sep 14, 2017
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Do you still have to disable the Steam overlay because it just keeps freezing the game (if you are lucky and it doesn't freeze the entire system)?
Especially when using its browser (which is the only thing I use it for, easier than alt-tabbing).
Xpander Sep 14, 2017
Quoting: TheSHEEEPDo you still have to disable the Steam overlay because it just keeps freezing the game (if you are lucky and it doesn't freeze the entire system)?
Especially when using its browser (which is the only thing I use it for, easier than alt-tabbing).

what? never seen it freeze a game or entire system. but it does make small fps hit on some games
TheSHEEEP Sep 14, 2017
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Quoting: Xpander
Quoting: TheSHEEEPDo you still have to disable the Steam overlay because it just keeps freezing the game (if you are lucky and it doesn't freeze the entire system)?
Especially when using its browser (which is the only thing I use it for, easier than alt-tabbing).

what? never seen it freeze a game or entire system. but it does make small fps hit on some games
I wish I had never seen it, but it happens once every few hours on both my laptop and main machine (which have both different hardware and linux distributions), as well as on the laptop of my GF.
And it happens far more often when using the browsers.

No idea what causes it but I'm willing to try again when the new Steam client is no longer beta.
oldgaro Sep 14, 2017
Praised be GabeN!
ImFromMoston Sep 14, 2017
Have they decided to fully support their own controller yet.. or is it still the half assed implication its been, pretty much since launch.
Joeyboots80 Sep 14, 2017
I just noticed I can finally watch trailers on steam in fullscreen without half the screen artifacting. I've had that issue for a while now. Good stuff!

Edit: Hmmm, wierd. It seems it still does it sometimes. It works the first time I play a trailer in fullscreen, but it does the artifacting every subsequent time after the first. I have to leave the store page for the game and go back to reset it. Well, at least it's partially fixed?


Last edited by Joeyboots80 on 14 September 2017 at 7:51 pm UTC
N30N Sep 15, 2017
Quoting: ImFromMostonHave they decided to fully support their own controller yet.. or is it still the half assed implication its been, pretty much since launch.
You're going to need to elaborate on what issue(s) you had with it. It's been flawless for me.
TheSHEEEP Sep 15, 2017
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Quoting: N30N
Quoting: ImFromMostonHave they decided to fully support their own controller yet.. or is it still the half assed implication its been, pretty much since launch.
You're going to need to elaborate on what issue(s) you had with it. It's been flawless for me.
Yeah, never had any problems with it, either.
charliebrownau Sep 15, 2017
Anyone managed to get Linux Steam on Debian/Ubuntu with R9 380/285/390 streaming to the steam link ?
ImFromMoston Sep 15, 2017
Oh right.. so it works flawless for everybody. So when you minimize steam big picture and decide to use a browser etc it does not lock up. That must be nice because for me using the controller on the desktop is broken. regardless of whether steam is in big picture mode or desktop. Oh I can use it as a mouse but thats not much use if you can't input text with it.
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