Gearbox Entertainment recently announced significant progress in the optimization of Borderlands 4 for PC via a Steam post. According to the studio, the game’s performance has been boosted by approximately 20% since its launch. This optimization comes in response to initial criticisms regarding disappointing performance encountered by many players, irrespective of their hardware configuration. Since then, the development team has committed to releasing a series of targeted updates, which have clearly yielded tangible results.
Enhancements to Framerate, Stability, and More
To illustrate these improvements, Gearbox shared comparative graphs. For instance, on a configuration featuring an RTX 4080, running at native 1440p resolution with “Very High” settings, the game’s average framerate has jumped from approximately 55 fps at launch to an average of 78 fps with version 1.5 released in March. Beyond the significant framerate boost, the team stated they have substantially improved overall stability and fluidity, minimizing “stutters” and bringing 1% and 0.1% “lows” closer to the average framerate. HLOD (Hierarchical Level of Detail) optimization helps make distant areas less resource-intensive without sacrificing visual quality. Furthermore, the number of crashes has been nearly halved compared to the initial release.
The studio has lightened the most demanding graphical effects, including particles, thrusters, and aerial events, and has refined several CPU-intensive systems such as Cryo damage, collision physics, and cloth simulation. Regarding lighting, Virtual Shadow Maps technology has been implemented, which reduces the load on the GPU during the day/night cycle transitions. Finally, the user interface backend has been made more efficient, resulting in lighter menus and HUD without any perceptible visual changes for the player.