While it did have its share of controversial story choices, Borderlands 3 was generally received well by gamers and critics. However, technical issues marred the game's launch, and it seems that over a year later, the game is still struggling to deliver a quality performance, even with next-gen hardware.
The topic of Borderlands 3's performance has never entirely gone away, but it's recently been brought back to the foreground courtesy of AMD. The graphics card producer recently showed off what its upcoming graphics cards are capable of, inadvertently highlighting a core issue with Borderlands 3.
AMD is, of course, in competition with Nvidia, as well as the next-gen Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles. In an effort to sell graphics cards, the company created a chart showing off some of the most popular games of recent years and what its card - in comparison to Nvidia's tech - is capable of handling. AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT 16GB and 6800 XT 16GB cards were both able to play Borderlands 3 in 4K at just over 60 FPS, but no farther. Gamers who were hoping for ultra-high frame rates alongside 4K visuals would likely be unhappy to hear this.
While this sounds at first like it might be an AMD problem, the rest of the chart is quite revealing. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 24GB card can also just barely reach 60 FPS at 4K in Borderlands 3, and the 3080 Founders Edition 10GB card falls slightly shy of it. This may come as a shock to PC gamers, who are usually accustomed to their top-of-the-line graphics cards and PC builds providing very high frame rates, often going far beyond 60 FPS.
I love how AMD is proudly showing that Borderlands can run 60 FPS on 4K with the newest next gen graphics cards, but all it does is show how badly optimized this game is. Only a RX 6800 XT / RTX 3080 or above can run this game on 4K. from borderlands3
However, it's not that these next-gen PC gaming cards are letting players down. The chart quickly reveals that other recent games, including some that have launched after Borderlands 3, like Doom Eternal, perform far better on the two card lineups. Nvidia and AMD's top cards both reach over 140 FPS in 4K in Doom Eternal, 80-100 with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Forza Horizon 4 surges past 160 FPS with AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT.
Unfortunately, this news didn't come as much of a surprise to many ardent Borderlands 3 players. When the game launched, players on the major consoles and PC experienced a number of graphical issues with Borderlands 3, along with extreme lag after doing simple things like opening menus in battle, as well as difficulties with splitscreen co-op. While some patches have been issued to improve on these problems, not everything has been resolved.
To be sure, players who adopt new consoles or graphics cards are likely to see an improvement in Borderlands 3's performance over current hardware, but these benchmark tests show that the game doesn't seem to be as well optimized as other titles, even a year later.
Borderlands 3 is available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Stadia, with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions to launch alongside the respective consoles.
Source: AMD