A small part of the Steam client beta update has provided a long-awaited feature in the form of a built-in framerate counter.
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As announced in the patch notes, the client now offers a frames per second counter through the Steam Overlay. Players often like to know how well their machine is handling a particular game, and with few exceptions the only way to measure FPS had been third party software. The framerate, if you're unaware, determines how smooth your game will run--low FPS means the game will appear choppy and stutter.
Programs such as FRAPS were popular alternatives, but nothing beats the convenience of using an integrated program. As you can see in the patch note forum comments, Steam users are quite pleased, with excitement about the counter standing out from replies about the rest of the update.
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That said, the patch does add several other fixes to Steam that may not get individual appreciation. In particular, the new broadcasting feature has received several upgrades: all-important audio/video synch has been improved, more streamlined opening of the broadcast page, and automatically adjusting video encoding rate depending on bandwidth. The full list of changes (of which there are not many) can be viewed at the link above.
