Borderlands 4 is punishing PCs around the world, as players bemoan the game’s relatively poor performance even on higher-end hardware. In response to this outcry, developer Gearbox Software and publisher 2K Games are steering players towards optimised settings curated by AMD and Nvidia, covering over 60 GPUs. While this seems reasonable, even admirable, in theory, real-world tests reveal otherwise.
As a reminder, Borderlands 4 system requirements are surprisingly lofty, particularly when it comes to processors, demanding eight cores at minimum. However, even Ryzen 7 9800X3D and GeForce RTX 5090 struggle to run the game at an acceptable frame rate, failing to crack past 60fps using the ‘Badass’ graphics preset at native 4K per testing by YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed.
These optimised settings do alleviate performance concerns, but don’t provide an experience in-line with the graphics cards in question nor do they remedy the game’s readily apparent poor optimisation. Whether you’re running a GeForce RTX 2070, RTX 5090, or some similar flavour of Radeon, you’re better off with manual tweaks or just waiting for subsequent patches.
Taking Nvidia’s optimised settings for a ride, Hardware Unboxed put GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 5060 Ti 8GB under the microscope. Suffice to say, the recommend options did boost performance but resulted in a truly horrible visual experience.
Confusingly, these settings boost frame rates well above the 30fps Nvidia claims GeForce RTX 2080 Ti should run at. Not only that, but the graphics card is more than capable of hitting ~60fps using the ‘Medium’ preset, greatly improving the game’s appearance.
It’s clear that this sticking plaster solution isn’t the silver bullet Borderlands 4 so desperately needs. The problem isn’t hardware, it’s poor optimisation, and it’s clear that Gearbox Software has plenty of work ahead of it to bring performance up to snuff on a wide range of configurations.
