Valve has been seemingly working non-stop on developing SteamOS in order to deliver a competitive advantage over alternatives like Windows, with recent updates frequently polishing the overall user experience and fixing annoying bugs. The most recent update to the SteamOS beta channel, SteamOS 3.9.6, has just been pushed, with improvements to VRR, high framerate games, and high refresh rate monitors.

Aside from the usual line-up of bug fixes for edge cases, the update notes directly mention improved frame timing when using a combination of VRR and the framerate limiter, a change that will likely be noticeable in how games feel to play; improved frame timing without VRR and with the framerate limiter enabled, with specific mention of games with capped frame rates; and more consistent performance after CPUs waking from deep CPU idle states. Games capable of running at high refresh rates will also no longer run at low refresh rates on 240 Hz displays. The beta also corrects issues with Remote Play on NVIDIA GPUs and fixes SDR saturation with HDR10 output on non-wide gamut displays.