Borderlands 3 PC performance thread

[Lorcain]

I was able to play more this weekend, and while my pc seems to be able to brute force somewhat reliable performance, the AA options are a big fail for my config. FXAA is tolerable, but it makes objects in the distance blurry. Temporal AA is just full on blurry mode. I usually end up selecting no AA and just dealing with the jaggies since everything looks so much clearer (at 1440p).

 

[eKongDiddy]

Just wanted to say that DX12 fixed my issues! I was barely managing 60FPS with everything on high and volumetric/ao on medium. Switched to DX12 and I'm getting 120~ while running around and about 90~ in combat now. So much happier with the game and going to raise vegetation to ultra now.

I'm on a Vega 56/2600X 16GB combo

 

[Buckle]

Got a GTX 960 2gb, Amd 6300, 8gb of ram, play at 1600x900 resolution but no matter how low I set it, I still have stutter/performance issues.

Should I go ahead and buy the Ps4 version and admit defeat or give it a month to patch?

Really don't want to shell out sixty bucks for another copy but honestly can't tell if its me and my rig is that bad or its something they can fix or optimize on their end.

 

[SirMossyBloke]

I still can't believe all these issues that most people seem to be having and I'm having the smoothest experience ever. Really wish I could help.

 

[Rewind]

I sometimes get a nasty graphic glitch when playing. Basically a big, black box appears in front of me and slowly takes up the screen. If I use the map and go to another location it goes away. Looks like this -

Happens in DX11 and DX12.

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This was happening to me, it was my factory overclock being unstable. If you down clock your gpu a bit using afterbunner it should go away.

 

[Mecha Meister]

So I found a way to at least reduce the stuttering to an amount that let´s me finally enjoy the game. I hope it will help you as well:

1. Use DX12
2. Disable the Control Flow Guard for the Borderlands 3 .exe (I´m just copying this from another place: navigate to Exploit Protection via the Win10 search => click program settings => Add program by path and navigate to BL3 installation folder \Borderlands3\OakGame\Binaries\Win64 => scroll down to Control Flow Guard and click override and the set it to OFF.
3. Prevent both Borderlands 3 .exe from accessing the internet. This can be done via System Settings => Windows Defender Firewall => Advanced Settings => New Outbound Rule => navigate to both .exe and block them from the internet. I´m not 100% if this step is necessary but it helped me. Of course you can only play alone.
4. When you´re in the game switch detail settings to very low then gradually raise the individual settings. Make sure texture streaming is not on ultra. I have most settings on ultra except for volumetric fog, material quality and SSR on medium and texture streaming on high.
5. Close the epic games launcher. I did this by switching from fullscreen to borderless fullscreen then closed the EGS program in the task bar and then switched back to Fullscreen.

I would say it reduced my stuttering quite significantly. I played the game a little more than 2 hours yesterday and had quite a lot of fun. Hopefully it stays that way. Good luck!

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I've been playing Borderlands 3 using DX12 and I've found the performance to be much better than DX11, I saw suggestiopns to disable Control Flow Guard like you mentioned, so I did, I also customized the settings to my liking.

The game does take a while to load up on its initial startup on DX12, however after that it's been smooth sailing and it loads pretty fast.
I have the game installed to my Samsung 860 EVO 500GB.

I have a Ryzen 5 3600 at 4GHz (I set it to 4GHz in the Bios) and a GTX 1080 Ti with a 144Hz 1440p display, a Dell S2716DG.

With the settings I use below the game runs around 80-100 fps with dips to around the mid 70s in heavy combat. IIRC there are some occasional stutters but nothing major.

Spoiler: System Specs

CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 4GHz (Manually set to 4GHz in the Bios)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 - (2x Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM)

Motherboard: MSI B450M Mortar
Ram: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2x8GB) 3000MHz CL15
Memory Timings (Overclocked): CL 16 - 20 - 20 - 38 - 58 - 1T
Memory Clock speed (Overclocked): 3600MHz
Memory Voltage: 1.43v
Memory Sub Timings:
TRFC: 630
TFAW: 20
tRDRDSC_L - 2
tWRWRSCL - 2
tRRD_S - 6
tRRD_L - 6
tWR - 18

GPU: GTX 1080 Ti (Core – 1911MHz, Memory 5508 MHz, Effective 11016 MHz)

Case: Coolermaster Q500L - 6 Fans
Case Fan Configuration
Front - 1x Noctua NF-F12 PWM Chromax (Intake)
Rear - 1x Noctua NF-F12 PWM Chromax (Exhaust)
Top - 1x Noctua NF-P12 + 1 x 120mm fan that was included with the case (Exhaust)
Bottom - 2x NF-A15 - (Intake)

PSU: Corsair TX650M

SSD (Operating System): Crucial MX300 275 GB

Chipset Driver: v1.07.29.0115
Motherboard bios: 7B89v18 (From MSI's website)

Edit: Made post clearer.

 

[Slackbladder]

This was happening to me, it was my factory overclock being unstable. If you down clock your gpu a bit using afterbunner it should go away.

Click to shrink...

I might have a teeny 5% overclock...maybe. But I'll go back to default and see how it goes.

 

[Andi]

Got rid of my stuttering, was playing in 1080p on my 2080 and had unstable framerate. (40-90fps). Changed my resolution to 1440p and have locked 60fps ....for now.

 

[Pat_DC]

Oddly enough the smoothest experience I've had has been by turning off AA and setting resolution to 125%, though second planet brings back the stutter. Will stick with dq11 s demo and full game until they sort out some patches.

 

[Samaritan]

To everyone finding DX12 to perform significantly better than DX11, how was your GPU usage in DX11?

 

[Mecha Meister]

To everyone finding DX12 to perform significantly better than DX11, how was your GPU usage in DX11?

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I forgot to mention this in my post, there were some occasions where my GPU usage would drop to around 80-90% when running the game above 80 fps, so it was seemingly CPU bound. Enabling DX12 appears to have alleviated this and I'm yet to encounter GPU usage below 95-99% when running the game above 80 fps (I was just watching one of the videos I recorded and it seems to stay pretty well at 99%).

 

[MercBerserk]

anyway to fix ultrawide issue for ingame cinematics? gameplay is perfect, but cinematics are messed up.

 

[Pat_DC]

anyway to fix ultrawide issue for ingame cinematics? gameplay is perfect, but cinematics are messed up.

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Do you have sharpening on? I thought turning that off was a fix.

 

[D-Soo]

man, sounds like there's all kinds of performance weirdness. I really wanna get the pc version, but maybe ill just wait for some patches

 

[Earvin Infinity]

DX12 has been smooth sailing for me ever since I switched over from DX11. 100 - 130 FPS at 1440p.

Windowed
V-Sync off (G-Sync enabled in CP)
No AA
Everything on Ultra except for Volumetric Fog set to off and Screen Space Reflections to Medium.

GTX 1080 Ti
Ryzen 2700X at 4.2 GHz (1.3v)
32GB DDR4 at 3200 MHz
Crucial MX500 SSD

 

[D-Soo]

DX12 has been smooth sailing for me ever since I switched over from DX11. 100 - 130 FPS at 1440p.

Windowed
V-Sync off (G-Sync enabled in CP)
No AA
Everything on Ultra except for Volumetric Fog set to off and Screen Space Reflections to Medium.

GTX 1080 Ti
Ryzen 2700X at 4.2 GHz (1.3v)
32GB DDR4 at 3200 MHz
Crucial MX500 SSD

Click to shrink...

i might give this a shot. Im rocking similar specs

 

[Pat_DC]

man, sounds like there's all kinds of performance weirdness. I really wanna get the pc version, but maybe ill just wait for some patches

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I'm enjoying the actual game but being one of the unlucky people who is hit by random (in battle) and not so random stuttering (ads-ing with certain weapons, interacting with a vending machine), I have to jump through too many hoops to try and make it smooth. It's just drained me of the will to play.
Though there are also people who don't seem to be having any stutter issues, so seems fairly random for now.

Really hope they tighten it up a bit with patches. maybe once dx12 comes out of beta (as it's labelle din game).

 

[Tahnit]

ok so this confuses me. Has anyone found out what "Material Complexity" even does? Like I legit can not find a single difference anywhere with it on or off. Yet performance goes through the roof when leaving it at medium. what gives?

 

[Skyfireblaze]

ok so this confuses me. Has anyone found out what "Material Complexity" even does? Like I legit can not find a single difference anywhere with it on or off. Yet performance goes through the roof when leaving it at medium. what gives?

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If you ever find out let me know, I'm curious aswell.

 

[Bonezz]

Just upgraded and went from a 4690k to a 9700k and my stutters are 99% gone in DX12. DX11 is a total mess still.

 

[Barnak]

The game is simply unplayable with the stuttering and hitching. It runs at a locked 60, but every time I enter combat or do something mildly interesting besides standing around, I get dips to 55-58 for like a millisecond.

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Eh. That's not stuttering. :P Try going from 60 to 45/30 instantly then "slowly" back to 60 in a matter of a second (or two).

 

[D-Soo]

Just upgraded and went from a 4690k to a 9700k and my stutters are 99% gone in DX12. DX11 is a total mess still.

Click to shrink...

Dang i tried setting it to DX12 but that won't let me get pass the claptrack loading screen, so Im stuck with DX11 :/

 

[Pat_DC]

Dang i tried setting it to DX12 but that won't let me get pass the claptrack loading screen, so Im stuck with DX11 :/

Click to shrink...

Some people have mentioned it taking up to 8 minutes.
First time I did it took about 5 minutes, so maybe just leave it going for awhile?

 

[Theswweet]

Just wanted to say that somehow I get massive stutters at 1080p/60 that don't happen at 1440p/60 on the same setup. This port is wack.

DX11 btw.

 

[Deathglobe]

Why is it full screen makes the mouse cursor off center ? I have to run borderless for it to work. And my controller half ass works during menu navigation but it's fine during combat

 

[D-Soo]

Some people have mentioned it taking up to 8 minutes.
First time I did it took about 5 minutes, so maybe just leave it going for awhile?

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Wow that's a long time. I might try it though. If DX12 helps with the stutters, it might just be worth it to wait for it to load

 

[redflamingolingo]

Wow that's a long time. I might try it though. If DX12 helps with the stutters, it might just be worth it to wait for it to load

Click to shrink...

It'll only take that long on the first load. All subsequent loads will be much faster.

 

[flyinj]

After the patch today, my stuttering got worse on my 1070TI/i7 7700 setup at 1080p.

 

[YourFriendLevi]

Game runs the same for me as it did before.

60fps at Ultra with 150% resolution scaled from 1080p on an RTX2060, i7-8700

 

[D-Soo]

It'll only take that long on the first load. All subsequent loads will be much faster.

Click to shrink...

Thanks! Yeah it's not too bad after that first time. I still get a bit of hitching here and there but its WAAAAAAY smoother than it was before and now I'm having a blast!

 

[redflamingolingo]

Thanks! Yeah it's not too bad after that first time. I still get a bit of hitching here and there but its WAAAAAAY smoother than it was before and now I'm having a blast!

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Yea, prior to me doing DX12, my game was a mess at any resolution with a 2080ti and an 8700k processor.

Now I'm mostly locked at 4k 60 fps. Occasional drops but nothing like before.

Turning off volumetric fog and screen space reflections helps a ton as well as lowering material complexity to low.

Playing coop still takes my frames into the 40s during heavy combat with lots of elemental effects onscreen, though.

 

[flyinj]

I just tried using DX12. It seems very slightly smoother, but I'm still getting stutter.

However, it seems like DX12 mode really screws up the sound. Some voices don't play at all, or play extremely low. This also happens with many of the other sound effects such as explosions, enemy gun fire, etc.

Anyone else notice this?

 

[La Fawn Duh]

After the patch today, my stuttering got worse on my 1070TI/i7 7700 setup at 1080p.

Click to shrink...

Same.

 

[Magnus]

Can anyone else confirm that the stuttering got better for them with yesterday's patch? Specifically regarding ADS/Zoom. Isn't happening for me anymore. That's got to be the patch note referencing texture streaming.

I'm so happy.

Stuttering overall is still occurring win battles get hectic and crazy, or sometimes just totally random. I kind of always thought that was just par for the course with PC games as a relatively new PC gamer. Not the case?

i5-6500k
RTX 2070 Super 8gb
16gb RAM
Playing at 2560x1080
DX11
60fps most of the time.
Most shit on High or Ultra.

 

[Herman The Tosser]

Can anyone else confirm that the stuttering got better for them with yesterday's patch? Specifically regarding ADS/Zoom. Isn't happening for me anymore. That's got to be the patch note referencing texture streaming.

I'm so happy.

Stuttering overall is still occurring win battles get hectic and crazy, or sometimes just totally random. I kind of always thought that was just par for the course with PC games as a relatively new PC gamer. Not the case?

i5-6500k
RTX 2070 Super 8gb
16gb RAM
Playing at 2560x1080
DX11
60fps most of the time.
Most shit on High or Ultra.

Click to shrink...

Stutter is not the same as a normal framerate drop during heavy action - stutter is when you're holding a solid framerate but the frametimes are disrupted (usually by a near-instantaneous framerate drop and recovery), resulting in a momentary hitch. It's usually not very common in most games.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Stuttering overall is still occurring win battles get hectic and crazy, or sometimes just totally random. I kind of always thought that was just par for the course with PC games as a relatively new PC gamer. Not the case?

i5-6500k
RTX 2070 Super 8gb
16gb RAM
Playing at 2560x1080
DX11
60fps most of the time.
Most shit on High or Ultra.

Click to shrink...

Huh? How do you mean 'par for the course', are you saying you routinely have drops below 60fps in most of your games at 2560x1080 with a 2070?!

 

[Magnus]

Huh? How do you mean 'par for the course', are you saying you routinely have drops below 60fps in most of your games at 2560x1080 with a 2070?!

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I'm a relatively new PC gamer when it comes to bleeding edge games. And my 2070 is brand new too. And I only just started doing 21:9, which I know is considered a demanding resolution, right?

I typically only play WoW, OverWatch and Diablo 3. WoW is unoptimized and dips all the time no matter how great your rig is, when a billion things are happening in a large raid. No one truly has a locked 60 in every activity in that game. Overwatch I have a locked 60, most of the time. I see dips to 55 every now and then or whatever at least I did with my 1060. Diablo 3 I can't remember.

As long as I've ever gamed on PC, I've been accustomed to not having a totally locked FPS. Assumed it's just how it is on this platform.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

I'm a relatively new PC gamer when it comes to bleeding edge games. And my 2070 is brand new too. And I only just started doing 21:9, which I know is considered a demanding resolution, right?

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21:9 is just the aspect ratio, it doesn't tell you how many pixels you're actually pushing. 3440x1440 is a common 21:9 res, 2560x1080 is for 21:9 monitors in the economy area. Nothing wrong with that of course, but somewhat odd to pair that with a 2070, especially with the games you play. That's barely over 1080p resolution.

As long as I've ever gamed on PC, I've been accustomed to not having a totally locked FPS. Assumed it's just how it is on this platform.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure if any platform is 'locked', and I can't speak for WoW which seems heavily dependent on single core CPU performance. "Platform' in the PC sense also doesn't mean much as you could be talking hundreds of hardware configs with an almost infinite array of graphics settings. But in most other games if you're often getting dips below 60fps with a 2070, it's incredibly unoptimized (I mean perhaps Monster Hunter with everything maxxed could be bottlenecked at that res) or something is up with your settings. A 2070 should be pulling 120+ fps at 2560x1080 with Overwatch for example.

 

[Magnus]

21:9 is just the aspect ratio, it doesn't tell you how many pixels you're actually pushing. 3440x1440 is a common 21:9 res, 2560x1080 is for 21:9 monitors in the economy area. Nothing wrong with that of course, but somewhat odd to pair that with a 2070, especially with the games you play. That's barely over 1080p resolution.


I'm not sure if any platform is 'locked', and I can't speak for WoW which seems heavily dependent on single core CPU performance. But in most other games if you're often getting dips below 60fps with a 2070, it's incredibly unoptimized (I mean perhaps Monster Hunter with everything maxxed could be bottlenecked at that res) or something is up with your settings. A 2070 should be pulling 120+ fps at 2560x1080 with Overwatch for example.

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My monitor is 60hz max I think? Idk. It was a $400 CDN LG ultra-wide. Freesync but no Gsync. I can't even see a difference above 60.

I haven't tried OverWatch yet on the 2070 but will now.

When I set Borderlands 3 to unlimited last night it often went up to 74 according to the in-game reports.

My cpu is old and apparently a bottleneck too. I5-6500k

Also, I'm already getting ridiculed by most people in my life for having thus monitor, as they see it as a massive luxury and I agree it looks beautiful. Is it seriously only "economy"? Lol

I just don't have thousands and thousands to pour into this. $400 on a monitor felt like a fucking egregious expense as is.

I don't overclock anything. I just learned how to use RTSS to cap my framerate outside the game and stabilize frame-timing, which made a world of difference in BL3.

edit - yeah, 2560x1080 is the max resolution I can set the monitor to. Looks...pristine to me? I guess I just don't know better.

edit2 - ok in Overwatch just now, it's basically reading as 58-59 constantly, perceived to me as 60. My display settings in Windows Control Panel Display says 59hz is the max my display can do... and I had the framerate cap in options for Overwatch to be "Display-based", but changed that to "Custom" with a max of 300. The in-game rate display stayed identical at 58-59.

My monitor is probably just bringing it down to that, I guess? I have no idea. This is all foreign to me.

This is all on Ultra settings in Overwatch btw. I just flipped everything to the very lowest settings. Same thing. 59-60 fps. I just don't think it can actually render higher than 60...?

 

[Magnus]

OOOOOHHHHH

It was VSync. I didn't realize that capped me at 60. I guess that makes sense.
Do people play with VSync off? Doesn't that result in lots of screen tearing?

Anyway, with VSync off, I'm getting 155 to 191 fps. lol

 

[Flappy Pannus]

OOOOOHHHHH

It was VSync. I didn't realize that capped me at 60. I guess that makes sense.
Do people play with VSync off? Doesn't that result in lots of screen tearing?

Anyway, with VSync off, I'm getting 155 to 191 fps. lol

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Ahh ok. I thought you were actually just barely getting to 60fps then, looks like nothing's wrong. No I don't think there's any point in turning off vsync, with your monitor Freesync is likely disabled past 60fps anyway, so unless you can deal with tearing and perhaps want some better input response there's no reason. Just cap it with RT.

 

[kOsmikcoffee]

I'm at my wit's end. I have an alienware m15 with the i7-8750H and 1060 6GB with 16GB of RAM. I should at LEAST be able to play this on medium at a stable 60FPS, but I still get DEEP frame rate drops that last for more than 10 seconds. What is HAPPENING????

 

[Ridebird]

I got some weird huge hitches post patch as well. Might just be Eden 6 though.

 

[kOsmikcoffee]

Some games I can play with very few drops, others I can't go above 20 FPS.

 

[Magneto]

I could use a performance patch. I simply don't want to play anymore, i'm so tired of stutters and going from 90fps to 35fps just like that (I tried everything listed here / on the internet)

 

[Ridebird]

Back on Pandora now and I am having a lot more issues with hitches and such post patch. I got rid of the big hitches mid combat with my tweaking previously but now it's back to the same old. It generally doesn't run very smooth even though it's high FPS.

Just such a shame. I am loving playing my high speed Zane build and zooming around like I'm playing Doom, but its just not possible for it to be as good as say Doom as its a constant issue with smoothness in this, and bam mid sick jump-to-shotgun-headshot the whole game locks up completely for 0,1 seconds.

Sigh.

 

[Poison Jam]

I'm just gonna share my experience with the game here, maybe it's helpful for someone.

I run the game with everything on the highest setting except material complexity and volumetric fog. Those are on medium, as the large performance gain is well worth the basically unnoticable visual difference.

Lock max framerate, or it'll max the GPU even with v-sync, and running in the background. RTSS didn't stop it in my case.

Run the game in exclusive fullscreen mode, instead of borderless. This fixed a constant stuttering for me and it's now perfectly smooth.

Oh, and virtual surround seems to work pretty well with DTS Sound Unbound and output set to headphones. Without this I recommend using the "small speakers" or "hifi", but YMMV.

 

[D-Soo]

Back on Pandora now and I am having a lot more issues with hitches and such post patch. I got rid of the big hitches mid combat with my tweaking previously but now it's back to the same old. It generally doesn't run very smooth even though it's high FPS.

Just such a shame. I am loving playing my high speed Zane build and zooming around like I'm playing Doom, but its just not possible for it to be as good as say Doom as its a constant issue with smoothness in this, and bam mid sick jump-to-shotgun-headshot the whole game locks up completely for 0,1 seconds.

Sigh.

Click to shrink...

I'm kind of around where you are. I've tweaked and changed so many settings and I still get stuttery performance everywhere. It seems to be worse than before at times and it's starting to drive me crazy

 

[SirMossyBloke]

I was getting the smoothest experience for the past 50 hours, until I updated Windows and the new nvidia drivers yesterday and now I'm getting an ever so slight hitch when I'm running around or opening menus.

Very annoying.

 

[redflamingolingo]

With the game's patch or perhaps Nvidia's new driver's, this fucking game is even worse than it was before.

The in-game benchmark is in NO WAY an indicator of how this game actually performs during most of it combat-heavy scenarios. It is a joke.

My CPU and CPU utilization are never close to maxing out, but the game consistently hitches and will not hold a locked framerate no matter the resolution or fps limit cap. This is RIDICULOUS. Before, it was running okay at 60 fps but still dropped when a lot of effects were onscreen.

The technical performance of this thing is just atrocious. Thank God I'm playing solo because the few times I played with other players, even before the patch, the framerate was even worse and would dip into the 20s.

What a technical piece of garbage this game is. Gearbox really should have left this one in the oven. I'm shelving it until it is patched properly. No reason why a 2080 ti and 8700k shouldn't brute force this thing at 1080p. It's embarrassing. Something is just fundamentally wrong with the way the game is streaming assets or something.