Borderlands 3 Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis

[Mistral]

Damn, this looks like a horribly unoptimized mess of a port...

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

guess my 2060 runs this game at Badass preset just fine... just need to turn off motion blur & it'll be perfect. Those who says this game is a "horribly unoptimized mess", this bench is using the "worst case scenario" where all the settings are cranked up to 11. Also, DX12 is STILL not adopted into many new games. DX11 is still fine despite being an older API but that doesn't mean it's not usable. Another thing here I wanna say out is there's a number of players on PC had technical issues playing BL3. Some to the point they lost all their progress & had to start over due to cloud save issues. None can point finger to either EGS or Gearbox for the cause.

 

[ZoneDymo]

That's a big jump in hardware demand from Borderlands 2 that I was able to play 1080p with Intel HD 530 integrated.

Right? I always thought of BL to be a laid back cell shaded ez to run game, but this seems very demanding

guess my 2060 runs this game at Badass preset just fine... just need to turn off motion blur & it'll be perfect. Those who says this game is a "horribly unoptimized mess", this bench is using the "worst case scenario" where all the settings are cranked up to 11. Also, DX12 is STILL not adopted into many new games. DX11 is still fine despite being an older API but that doesn't mean it's not usable. Another thing here I wanna say out is there's a number of players on PC had technical issues playing BL3. Some to the point they lost all their progress & had to start over due to cloud save issues. None can point finger to either EGS or Gearbox for the cause.

Jeez someone is a little too protective....

 

[Sithaer]

I get around ~50 FPS average and some drops down to ~45 in bigger fights or big open areas which is okay for me since it still stays in my monitor's Freesync range most of the time.

I do play on 2560x1080 which is around ~10 FPS less than 1920x1080 so I guess the RX 570 would be fine for that resolution with the same tweaked settings.

There was a weird or buggy zone tho where my FPS tanked and had to drop down to the lowest settings just to get trough.
Luckily it was just a ~10 mins long zone and so far in ~26 hours of gameplay that was the only one,no idea what was the deal with that place.

I'm surprised no reports of crashing here. I went through a good 2 hours of tweaking before I could get the game to run stable but after capping at 60fps. After I posted my 'fix' on the Gearbox forum others started posting it as a fix as well. The game is super broken for the most part but runs stable just fine on another one of my computers which is slightly less powerful than the machine that was crashing constantly.

In my ~26+ hours atm I had 2 crashes so far and only 1 was a 'real' crash the other one was me doing stuff in the bacground while the game was open.
I have vsync off in the game with unlimited FPS cap since I'm using a global FPS cap of 74 in the AMD driver to always stay in my monitor's Freesync range.

Right? I always thought of BL to be a laid back cell shaded ez to run game, but this seems very demanding

Unreal 3 vs Unreal 4,obviously there will be a system req jump.
This is not uncommon with UE 4 games,I get even bigger drops in Darksiders 3 for example when bunch of stuff is happening on the screen like transforming to Havoc form with tons of particle effects.
That being said I do agree that the game could use optimization but at least we are not stuck using 1 CPU core 100% like in BL 2..

Btw BL is not cell shaded,its using hand drawn 'art' style look.

 

[R00kie]

I run 3440X1440 and all the cut scenes are not centered in the screen. It's like the game is trying to render correctly but cant. During the scenes where you meet a new character/boss and the name flies in it's partially out of frame. Not a huge deal though, everything outside of the cut scenes has been fine.

this has been an issue with most if not all borderlands games

 

[B-Real]

That's at 2160p and Ultra.

i7-8750H & GTX 1060 Max-Q at 1080p, High, I get between 70 to 90 FPS.

i5-8400 & RX 5700 XT at 1080p, mix of High and Ultra settings, I get around 80 to 110 FPS. Adrenalin 19.9.2 drivers.

You don't buy a $1000 (which is $1100 in reality) to lower settings to medium-high in 4K.

 

[Cheeseball]

You don't buy a $1000 (which is $1100 in reality) to lower settings to medium-high in 4K.

But as I mentioned, there is no discernible difference between High, Ultra and Badass. Volumetric fog is the biggest performance hit so there is no need to have this on anything above medium.

The point of having these settings is to tweak your system to the desired performance level, a strong trait of PC gaming. Having a high-end video card just allows you to broaden the tweaking potential, not necessarily max everything out and call it a day.

EDIT: Too many *betweens*

 

[Hockster]

this has been an issue with most if not all borderlands games

It's never been an issue for me on any of the previous three games. Turns out the solution is to disable Fidelity FX. I'm kinda suprised Gearbox hasn't issued a patch yet.

 

[64K]

Gearbox says they are working on a patch to address performance issues:

Gearbox is currently working on a performance & QoL patch for Borderlands 3

Gearbox announced that it is currently working on a performance patch for Borderlands 3.

www.dsogaming.com

"As we’ve already stated, the game’s DX12 mode is currently busted as it takes ages to load the game. Not only that, but its DX11 brings noticeable CPU/memory limitations to older PC systems. Furthermore, the PC version suffers from stuttering issues on CPUs with less than 10 CPU threads."

As is common, the absolute worst time to buy a game and try to play it is when it first comes out but that's what most gamers do anyway. Better to wait a while until the game is patched and polished (finished) and pick it up for half price on a sale.

 

[pandemonium]

I believe I'm nearing the end of the game and have about 30 hours played (I'm a 100% explorer kind of gamer). Discovered SLI works, so my ancient 970's are still rocking it (DX10+DX11 setting: 0x080000F1) . I get around 45-60 FPS @1440, with many settings turned to medium or off. I don't do blur in any game, so that's always off. Volumetric fog heavily impacts performance and I reduced that to medium.

The game is enjoyable, but feels like it was a little rushed for release. I've run into several bugs, some of which required me to quit to main menu then resume the mission I was on. Nothing completely game breaking, just a nuisance. One bug was having my screen locked into the iced effect you get when you're chilled. Another was having mission critical enemies spawn outside the playable area (we were able to "coerce" them from behind the wall/ceiling using abilities and jumping around.

Overall, I'm having fun and it's the Borderlands I've come to expect from previous releases.

P.S.

Spoiler

A freeze shotgun is fucking awesome. Also, the Money attribute and split & multi (you can get both, equaling many, many grenades) rakes in cash hard on large groups of enemies.

 

[W1zzard]

I've run into several bugs, some of which required me to quit to main menu then resume the mission I was on. Nothing completely game breaking, just a nuisance.

Exact same. Happened 3 times so far

 

[R00kie]

It's never been an issue for me on any of the previous three games. Turns out the solution is to disable Fidelity FX. I'm kinda suprised Gearbox hasn't issued a patch yet.

it has been an issue on the Pre-Sequel for sure for me

 

[Sithaer]

Finished my first playtrough,did pretty much everything I could find and some minor farming meanwhile and that way it took me almost 40 hours.

In overall I'm satisfied with the game,did not have any serious bugs either just some minor ones here and there but that was the same in BL1/2.

This game will keep me busy for a long time I think just like the previous ones did,well worth my money.

 

[xorbe]

8086K all core 5GHz, 32GB 3200CL14, 1TB nvme, 2080Ti. Using DX12 mode. I disabled Fidelity FX, motion blur, fog, and reflections. Seems to run fine at 4K with those settings.

I tried something insane, I set up DSR for 7680x4320, and then tried 200% in-game for 15360x8640 ... I think the graphics card runs out of vram, as the fps drops from 20 to 1 from 175% to 200% (this is all with LOWEST gfx settings lol).

 

[bug]

8086K all core 5GHz, 32GB 3200CL14, 1TB nvme, 2080Ti. Using DX12 mode. I disabled Fidelity FX, motion blur, fog, and reflections. Seems to run fine at 4K with those settings.

I tried something insane, I set up DSR for 7680x4320, and then tried 200% in-game for 15360x8640 ... I think the graphics card runs out of vram, as the fps from from 20 to 1 from 175% to 200% (this is all with LOWEST gfx settings lol).

The latter part tells me your futureproofing might be in danger. Better hurry up and upgrade that rig

 

[Apocalypsee]

Gearbox says they are working on a patch to address performance issues:

Gearbox is currently working on a performance & QoL patch for Borderlands 3

Gearbox announced that it is currently working on a performance patch for Borderlands 3.

www.dsogaming.com

"As we’ve already stated, the game’s DX12 mode is currently busted as it takes ages to load the game. Not only that, but its DX11 brings noticeable CPU/memory limitations to older PC systems. Furthermore, the PC version suffers from stuttering issues on CPUs with less than 10 CPU threads."

As is common, the absolute worst time to buy a game and try to play it is when it first comes out but that's what most gamers do anyway. Better to wait a while until the game is patched and polished (finished) and pick it up for half price on a sale.

Hopefully by the time this game released on Steam all this issues are ironed out.

 

[64K]

Hopefully by the time this game released on Steam all this issues are ironed out.

I'm curious to see how this game lands on Steam in 6 months. I'm wondering if it will be on sale right away or they wait for the Steam Summer Sale in June? If we can know what the initial sales will be on Steam then we will have a pretty good idea how many people really waited for the Steam release and refused to buy it on EGS. Of course if it comes to Steam on sale immediately that could skew the results. Some people don't care where they buy it. They are just waiting on a sale.

 

[Hockster]

Seems there was a minor hotfix today, no performance fixes though.

https://borderlands.com/en-US/news/2019-09-19-borderlands-3-hot-fixes-sept-19/

 

[Liquid Cool]

I'm curious to see how this game lands on Steam in 6 months.

6 months is the announced wait time? I thought it would be a year...and frankly speaking, I'm so far behind the times, I didn't even know it was released! I saw Wiz's review and I actually did a doubletake and I think almost a complete WTF escaped my pie hole before I gained composure....

Just so you know...Liquid Cool isn't the cursing type. Off to read the review!

Best Regards,

Liquid Cool

 

[64K]

6 months is the announced wait time? I thought it would be a year...and frankly speaking, I'm so far behind the times, I didn't even know it was released! I saw Wiz's review and I actually did a doubletake and I think almost a complete WTF escaped my pie hole before I gained composure....

Just so you know...Liquid Cool isn't the cursing type. Off to read the review!

Best Regards,

Liquid Cool

Everything I've seen says it will be available on Steam in April 2020 so 6 months.

Borderlands 3 is the next big Epic Games Store exclusive

Sequel will require Epic’s platform from Sept. 13 through April 2020.

arstechnica.com

My backlog of newer games is ridiculous. I'm certainly not in a such a hurry to play the game that I will pay $110 for the base game and Season Pass.

 

[Liquid Cool]

My backlog of newer games is ridiculous. I'm certainly not in a such a hurry to play the game that I will pay $110 for the base game and Season Pass.

Uh...I wouldn't pay half that price...so, I guess I'm in no rush either. $110? That's two WTF's in one hour! Seriously...$110? Looks like I'll be waiting for the bargain bin on this one. It'll come sooner or later.


I just finished the review. The second sentence of the conclusion could use a little polish...

"The gunplay, shooting, and tons of loot have only seen small changes, which is a great as those are the core values of Borderlands".

Best Regards,

Liquid Cool

 

[happita]

My sentiments exactly.
I've come to love that "buying games at a bargain" mindset. Finances is what drives most purchases, games are no different. It'll just take time until it reaches everybody. My buy point is when it goes down to $30ish for base+dlc. I figure in 2 years

 

[Cheeseball]

My backlog of newer games is ridiculous. I'm certainly not in a such a hurry to play the game that I will pay $110 for the base game and Season Pass.

It was $75 for the Super Deluxe Edition before the game launched September 17. Now it's $89.99.

Not sure why the other sites have it at $119.99 though.

 

[Apocalypsee]

My sentiments exactly.
I've come to love that "buying games at a bargain" mindset. Finances is what drives most purchases, games are no different. It'll just take time until it reaches everybody. My buy point is when it goes down to $30ish for base+dlc. I figure in 2 years

Borderlands series always have some fancy DLC, either a good campaign or just a silly skin in its lifetime. Without having a season pass is annoying. Thats why I wait for either GoTY edition that includes major DLC or the Handsome Edition that includes every single DLC plus Pre sequel.

 

[Agent_D]

Found a finalized setting for a great performance/visual experience. Have been reading/watching and experimenting with settings. Do note that this is for a single player experience through the story, when you start doing 4 player wave based, or challenge based stuff, you'll run into some pretty crazy fps drops when people are throwing/shooting hundreds of things. I had a drop into the mid 30's last night with all the loot on the ground and all the nades/bullets going off.

It is extremely difficult to tell the difference in visuals between Badass preset and the settings I've settled at and gave me a ~40fps increase over the Badass preset.

Radeon VII @ 2025/1200-1090mv
Ryzen 3600X - 32GB DDR4 3533

2560x1440
Badass preset = 64fps in-game benchmark
Settings I use = 101fps in-game benchmark

In order of graphics settings in-game: Temporal -> On -> Off -> Ultra -> 16x -> Medium -> Ultra -> High -> Ultra -> Ultra -> Medium -> Ultra -> Ultra -> Medium -> Medium