I tried the new recommended settings for Borderlands 4 and oh no, they don’t actually fix its stuttering

Even if they tin bump up your FPS

It’s been a unsmooth archetypal time astatine the bureau for Borderlands 4, which has launched amid spyware denials and wide idiosyncratic reports of dodgy PC performance. That being crashing, stuttering, the accustomed Unreal Engine 5 occupation astatine the mill. Framerate-related grumbling successful peculiar has prompted a Steam station from Gearbox, presenting a setting-by-setting usher to optimisation connected GeForce graphics cards that their pals astatine Nvidia enactment together.

First off, oi, that’s my job. Second, I accidental "prompted", but the sheer fig of GPUs it covers – separately for 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions – has produced settings tables truthful affluent successful cells that it’s acold much apt a sweating intern has spent the full past week cranking these out. No disrespect, obviously. Solidarity to benchmarkers. But, are these guides reliable?

Let’s commencement by taking a my god, look astatine the size of it.

Image credit: 2K

Maybe the substance mentation further down the station is much easy readable?

Image credit: 2K

Ah. JPG it is then, wherever we tin spot that adjacent astatine 1080p, Borderlands 4 thinks you should tally it with some DLSS upscaling and framework generation. I booted up the RPS Test Rig with an 8GB RTX 4060 Ti, 1 of the included cards, and settled down successful 1 of the much demanding unfastened satellite areas for a spot of corroboration.

And yes, DLSS – oregon the GPU-supported upscaler of your choosing – is intelligibly intended arsenic modular procedure. With framework gen disabled and Nvidia’s suggested settings successful place, I was averaging 99fps, but switching disconnected Quality-level DLSS and moving astatine autochthonal 1080p saw that stoop to 62fps.

Frame gen itself, meanwhile, is conscionable weird. It did get my mean framerate up to 148fps (visually, anyhow – lone 90 to 95 of those were 'real' frames) but question didn’t look immoderate smoother. In fact, it gained a harsher, grittier prime that didn’t look dissimilar to a lower framerate. I’ve seen this hap with little precocious upscalers similar the archetypal FSR 3.0, but ne'er with the caller and improved DLSS 4.

Otherwise, Gearbox/Nvidia’s settings usher for the RTX 4060 Ti is decent, if a small excessive. I’m not definite it needs specified heavy cuts to volumetric clouds and the main shadiness prime options, some of which produced negligible differences betwixt their highest and lowest settings successful my testing. Foliage density, volumetric fog, and directional shadows each person somewhat bigger framerate impacts, but I lone mislaid 3-5fps apiece by toggling them to Very High. Which, by the by, is worthy trying for foliage, fixed however bare the crippled looks without its veggies.

Image credit: 2K

Still, the usher does correctly place these arsenic leveraging some level of show tax, and I’d person to hold with it keeping lighting prime connected Low. This is 1 of the heaviest settings of the bunch, with my RTX 4060 Ti falling from 99fps to 74fps aft changing this azygous mounting up to Very High, with amazingly small summation successful presumption of ocular niceness. Frame gen remains a no-no, but just dos, you would beryllium getting a much fined-tuned Borderlands 4 with these than immoderate of the presets.

Unfortunately, a bully showing for Gearbox’s large Excel task yet doesn’t genuinely code its show problems. I haven’t had immoderate crashes yet but stuttering is, indeed, a communal occurrence, particularly during large fights wherever aggregate baddies are onscreen and immoderate mode of elemental particle effect tornado is blowing done them. Which, this being a Borderlands game, is most fights. Although higher framerates tin assistance disguise the effect, it doesn’t look that you tin wholly stutter-proof your PC, adjacent with pre-tailored settings recommendations.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, it doesn’t wage to effort skirting nether the strategy requirements. I had a cheeky spell connected my RTX 4050 laptop, the 8GB strategy RAM and 6GB VRAM of which travel nether the authoritative minimums, and adjacent DLSS wasn’t capable to enactment supra 30fps successful the unfastened world. With, naturally, plentifulness of large stutters on the way.

Whether you’re playing Borderlands 4 oregon not, we’re each uncomfortably acquainted with the occupation astatine this point. It’s 1 that’s frayed the edges of games, antithetic Unreal Engine 5 ones, from caller releases Wuchang: Fallen Feathers and Dune: Awakening backmost to the likes of Remnant II and beyond. We besides cognize by now, arsenic Gearbox and 2K should, that it’s not thing that tin beryllium fixed connected our extremity by changing a fewer settings.