PC gamers eager to dive into Borderlands 4 may need to adjust their expectations or hold off entirely until further updates. Initial performance tests on a setup featuring an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 and Intel Core i7 at medium settings reveal substantial challenges.
Performance Testing Results
The testing commenced with shader compilation, which extended over 15 minutes, and was followed by an issue causing the game to stall on a perpetual "Logging in" screen, necessitating a complete system reboot to proceed. Upon managing to launch the game, significant framerate drops were a persistent issue during the early gameplay, particularly during high-intensity scenarios such as combat and boss fights.
When confronting the Warden Scathe boss, average frame rates registered at 72fps at 1080p, 61fps at 1440p, and just 46fps at 4K. During these tests, the critical 1% low numbers further dropped to 52fps, 37fps, and 25fps respectively, with evident stuttering interrupting the gameplay experience. Despite the test setup not meeting the recommended specifications for 1440p at 60fps, the performance on a somewhat modern $599 graphics card paired with an 11th-gen CPU was underwhelming for medium settings.
Open-World Gameplay Struggles
As the game progresses into the open world, performance declines markedly. Average frame rates plunged to 62fps at 1080p, 53fps at 1440p, and a mere 23fps at 4K resolutions. The 1% lows continued to drop, plummeting to 37fps, 26fps, and 14fps. These figures highlight frequent and severe performance issues.
Moreover, disabling DLSS exacerbated the problem, yielding average rates of 56fps, 50fps, and 20fps and 1% lows dropping further to 32fps, 23fps, and 14fps. Such low 1% figures are alarming, indicating unpredictable and intense performance bottlenecks.
The gameplay was further marred by visual glitches such as texture pop-ins, objects vanishing from the screen, and erratic lighting flickers, underscoring concerns about the game's optimization levels. These issues tarnish what could be a promising entry to the series, making the experience nearly unworkable during combat scenarios.
In light of these difficulties, players are strongly recommended to postpone their foray into Borderlands 4 until developers release substantial patches or hotfixes, which are hoped to alleviate the current performance woes and provide a more stable gaming experience. The potential for Borderlands 4 is undeniable, but crucial technical adjustments are necessary to realize it fully on the PC platform.
