Whereas it is now removed from unusual for a sport to wrestle with efficiency points at launch, Borderlands 4 finds itself in a novel place. It is because, moderately than developer Gearbox committing to only fixing the reported points, its CEO, Randy Pitchford, is busy making daring claims about avid gamers and PC {hardware} on social media, whereas additionally utilizing customer support knowledge to disclaim that the problem is widespread.
Effectively, I lastly had the prospect to provide Borderlands 4 a go on PC utilizing our RTX 4070 testing rig, which we use to benchmark all the newest releases, and my expertise was removed from optimistic. Taking Randy’s claims about avid gamers anticipating to run tremendous excessive graphics on low-spec PCs into consideration, I solely ran the sport on the medium graphics preset, whereas presenting my knowledge and basic expertise. Our rig might not use the perfect graphics card or CPU, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a really succesful gaming PC, usually operating the newest releases on the excessive preset with respectable body charges at 1080p and 1440p.
My time testing Borderlands 4 received off to the worst doable begin, with the shader compilation taking quarter-hour and 35 seconds, adopted by an limitless look forward to the sport to log in. Seems, I would already hit my first downside. I verified the sport information, allowed the sport by my firewall, and ran the sport as an administrator, however nothing received me previous this limitless “Logging in” display screen.
By this level, I am already nicely over half an hour into making an attempt to play Borderlands 4 and may’t even get to the primary menu, which is way from ideally suited. As a guardian of a 10-year-old and a 10-month-old, my gaming time is already quick, so sitting round coping with dodgy menus and overly lengthy shader compilation was extraordinarily irritating. The repair for this difficulty was seemingly to restart my complete PC, which lastly received me previous the dreaded login display screen.
After ensuring the sport was set to the medium graphics preset with Nvidia DLSS set to High quality, I started taking part in Borderlands 4. In the course of the preliminary gameplay part, as much as the primary boss combat, efficiency was okay, however there have been frequent body charge drops when getting into fight and all through firefights. The extra I attempted to make use of Borderland’s motion mechanics to my benefit, the more severe the efficiency drop.
Testing the Warden Scathe boss throughout three resolutions, my common body charge was 72fps at 1080p, 61fps at 1440p, and 46fps at 4K. This combat was the best part throughout the opening portion of Borderlands 4 to repeat, permitting me to pretty check every decision. The 1% lows at every decision have been 52fps, 37fps, and 25fps, respectively. There was noticeable stuttering at every decision, mirrored within the typically low 1% lows, which I will contact on once more shortly.
In accordance with the Borderlands 4 system necessities, our check rig falls shy of assembly the really helpful specs for enjoying at 1440p with 60fps, besides, you’d anticipate a two-year-old $599 Nvidia GPU paired with an Eleventh-gen Intel CPU to deal with these settings, even when they are not formally listed within the necessities.
Efficiency, nevertheless, solely received worse when making it to the open-world portion of the sport. As quickly as I used to be executed with the tour of Claptrap’s camp and I used to be free to roam, the efficiency dropped dramatically, and the stuttering received a lot worse.
The typical body charges dropped to 62fps at 1080p, 53fps at 1440p, and simply 23fps at 4K. The 1% lows additionally suffered, dropping to 37fps, 26fps, and 14fps, respectively. Spin it nevertheless you want, Randy, however Borderlands shouldn’t be dropping to 37fps at 1080p on an RTX 4070 with medium graphics settings.
With out DLSS, the averages drop to 56fps, 50fps, and 20fps whereas the 1% lows drop to 32fps, 23fps, and 14fps. With or with out upscaling, these numbers are dire, significantly the 1% lows. At each 1440p, this determine is unacceptable, exhibiting simply how continuously the sport is struggling. For context, when testing a single-player shooter, we sometimes set the bar as a 60fps common and 45fps 1% low.
As an alternative, now we have a 1% low that is nicely below 30fps, not to mention 45fps, indicating that there are frequent moments the place the sport is struggling to deal with no matter is going on on display screen.
Even simply navigating the open world, actively making an attempt to keep away from fight, I’d discover huge texture pop-ins, objects disappearing from the sport world, and points with lighting, corresponding to fixed flickering. So many areas of Borderlands 4 scream poor optimization, and the response to date comes throughout as a scramble to keep away from blame.
Regardless of the problems I’ve encountered, I do not imagine Borderlands 4 is way off from being an important sport when it comes to efficiency. A number of patches or hotfixes targeted on efficiency are wanted, however the sooner these are made out there, the earlier I can get again to the sport.
In its present state, nevertheless, the sport is borderline unplayable, particularly when participating in fight, which is a elementary a part of the sport. For now, I’d moderately spend my time taking part in correctly optimized video games with out the efficiency frustrations.
Are you scuffling with efficiency in Borderlands 4, or does the sport run simply high quality for you? Tell us over in our group Discord server.
