Borderlands 4 can drop to 30 FPS if you don’t use frame generation, even with an RTX 4080, early test shows

Borderlands 4 is finally almost here. The game is set to launch on September 12, and fans of the series are counting down the days until release. It has been more or less six years since the previous game in the series was released, and players can’t wait to jump into the action again.

Even though there are still a few days left until launch, we now have some early impressions of how the game performs. Arekkz Gaming on YouTube got the chance to try Borderlands 4 early thanks to 2K, and they shared some important details about the performance. However, what they found might worry some PC players, at least based on this early build.

Borderlands 4 performance on PC could do with some improvements

According to the video, the game was tested on rigs powered by an RTX 4080 paired with a Core i7 CPU. When frame generation was enabled, the game ran pretty well, hitting around 60 to 70 FPS during intense combat. But without frame generation, the FPS dropped to 30 to 40. That’s still playable, but the RTX 4080 is a very powerful graphics card, so it should not be struggling this much without relying on frame gen. We do know that the game is a bit demanding, but nothing the RTX 4080 can’t handle.

Before you take a look at the performance for yourself, it’s important to point out the exact test conditions. Arekkz Gaming points out they were playing at 1440p on medium settings on a rig with the RTX 4080 and i7-11700KF (a CPU that is one generation below the recommended specs) and 32GB DDR4 RAM. They claim that despite the need for frame gen, “it actually felt smooth and responsive here,” which is reassuring, given the fact latency is what people tend to worry about with AI-generated frames.

Another issue they highlighted was stuttering, as they noted that moving from one area to another caused noticeable stutters and even short freezes, which ruin the gameplay. Even though the stability was decent, as no crash issues were reported, the stuttering was hard to ignore.

Another problem they ran into was tied to multiplayer. When acting as the party leader, there were times when bullets didn’t connect with enemies. That means enemies took no damage even when being shot, and this is the kind of bug that can get very frustrating in a game like Borderlands. On top of that, the default mouse sensitivity was described as unusually high, meaning players will have to manually adjust it.

The good news is that these issues can be easily fixed. With the release just days away, there will most likely be a day-one patch to smooth out performance, fix the stuttering, and deal with the multiplayer bugs.

Written by

Abdul Haddi

Abdul is a tech writer and Editor for PC Guide, specializing in all things tech, gaming, and hardware.

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