Borderlands 4 launched earlier this month, and the sales reported aren’t anything to scoff at, at least not on consoles, that is. While we already reported on how to fix Borderlands 4 crashing, PC performance remains a topic of contention as disgruntled players complain about the release.
Across forums and even social media, Borderlands fans have raised concerns that the only reason the game runs at all is its reliance on DLSS and frame generation – otherwise stable framerates wouldn’t be possible.
And don’t think this is another “well, you don’t have a powerful enough PC” thing – it isn’t.
Even players with top-of-the-line rigs have reported issues, whereas some others have said that even with their aged RTX 2080 and 32GB of ram, the game runs buttery smooth, although how much of that was DLSS cannot be confirmed.
Gearbox’s very own Randy Pitchford, notoriously vocal, defended the game, calling it “pretty damn optimal” and urged Borderlands 4 players to use the game’s full toolbox to get better results. Ouch.
Why Players Are Increasingly Frustrated With Borderlands 4 Performance
Upscaling tech like AMD’s FSR, but especially NVIDIA’s DLSS is nothing short but gaming magic. But let’s not forget one thing, it was always marketed as an efficient way to help older GPUs keep up with newer games – not as an excuse to stop optimizing newer titles altogether, which appears to be the trend recently.
Over the years, the technology has improved tenfold, and the gaming world has marvelled at what DLSS 4.0 has achieved, producing great framerates and notable boost to performance and stability – but it is difficult to understand players critiquing the shift from using these tools as helpful extras, to specifically designing games around them to function.
So in regards to Borderlands 4, this frustration seems to be wholly justified, sadly. Without enabling DLSS and even frame generation, the game struggled to maintain a smooth, and at times even playable performance, even without cranking the resolution up to 4K.
So it is now in Gearbox’s court to respond with proper patches, and the first step – an optimization guide, provided by NVIDIA officially – has been taken, which improved the performance for some.
