Borderlands 4 GPU Benchmark: Over 40 GPUs Tested

[amghwk]

It would have been far better and fruitful to use a well known older engine - UE4 or even UE3 - to make a well matured story and we'll developed design, instead of using a newer engine, just because it's new.

Same goes for graphics cards and game developers - developers keep chasing the next functions of newer cards, rather than making the best use of currently available cards to the max potential with fully optimized codes. And just before a game can do that, graphics card manufacturers come out with newer cards because they want to remain in business.

More important than graphics is the gameplay. Getting immersed in the gameworld doesn't need to have photo-realistic graphics.
For photo realism, just open the door or window and have a better view.

Even a humble 16-color EGA DOS game can give so many hours of good gameplay and fun. (Yes this may be too extreme for new gen gamers, but just to give a point of view. And yeah, I still play DOS and old Console games, using 86Box, Dosbox and Emulators.)

 

[pcnthuziast]

My laptop actually got better than expected results in terms of the numbers, but has an issue that makes me think my laptop may have a hardware issue which is now being checked out at microcenter. The gpu wattage frequently tanks even into the teens at around 14w and it's not that the cpu is pulling too much from the total power envelope. At the medium preset, 2k res, dlss quality and framegen only at 2x, I get way above 60fps which is odd to me considering those numbers are not at all in line with the numbers TS got in their testing. My laptop has a max q 5070 and intel 255h.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

My laptop actually got better than expected results in terms of the numbers, but has an issue that makes me think my laptop may have a hardware issue which is now being checked out at microcenter. The gpu wattage frequently tanks even into the teens at around 14w and it's not that the cpu is pulling too much from the total power envelope. At the medium preset, 2k res, dlss quality and framegen only at 2x, I get way above 60fps which is odd to me considering those numbers are not at all in line with the numbers TS got in their testing. My laptop has a max q 5070 and intel 255h.

30fps and 720p? Its not okay.

Plus, the 5xxx series has buggy drivers. If you look at the reviews, you'll see that in many cases it loses out to the previous generation.

 

[BogdanR]

The last, slightly harder dropped ball killed all the dinosaurs.

 

[pcnthuziast]

30fps and 720p? Its not okay.

Plus, the 5xxx series has buggy drivers. If you look at the reviews, you'll see that in many cases it loses out to the previous generation.

When did I say anything about 30fps and 720p? Ah you must be trolling.

I was playing at 2k with quality dlss and frame gen 2x on medium preset. Getting well over 60fps. Don't believe me? Cool, don't. It doesn't affect reality.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

When did I say anything about 30fps and 720p? Ah you must be trolling.

I was playing at 2k with quality dlss and frame gen 2x on medium preset. Getting well over 60fps. Don't believe me? Cool, don't. It doesn't affect reality.

60fps with fake frames enabled = 30fps.
I was mistaken about the resolution; it is 960p.

 

[Starfals]

Wrap Up: 5080 is a horrible video card and totally pointless too. Higher price for literally worse or same performance as before. At best +2-5 fps more. Funny generation leap..........

 

[Skiprudder]

Thank you for the great article.

Will you be looking at CPU scaling? This is the first major game I'm aware of to require an 8-core CPU. The base CPUs listed, i7-9700 and 2700X, are handily outclassed in most games by more modern 6-core chips like the 7600X.

Does the game really need 8 cores? And while the 2700X has 16-threads, the Intel chip only has 8. I'd love to see one of your scaling articles here, and if it does actually need 8-cores, what's going on / going wrong with scheduling?

 

[BadThad]

No worries, the game will depreciate like a Kia. We'll see it dirt cheap in a year or so.

 

[yannus]

Funny how between doom and crysis, evolution of video games was impressive. Nowadays it's meh, in all aspects. Yet a lot of people play.

 

[Prosercunus]

I said 3-4 years ago that lazy game development was going to result in this. I hate I was right.

 

[Skully]

Even if the game were perfectly optimized, you'd see at best a few percentage points of improvement. People, including reporters are constantly throwing around "poorly optimized" when they clearly have no idea what that means. I play the game at 1440p and it runs buttery smooth at 140 fps with very little compromises on a 4080 standard.

Optimization doesn't result in hundreds of FPS improvement. Optimization is a 1-5% improvement AT MOST. Anything more than that and you're not dealing with optimization, you're sacrificing quality and fidelity. That's what other games are doing. Yes, there are other games that look good out there, but this game blows them all out of the water. There's nothing on the market even close in tears of visuals.

Randy, is that you?

Regardless, I fully disagree with everything you typed. I'm sure double digit optimizations can (should) be done with this game. Also, the graphics are *fine*, but nothing to get excited over.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

Randy, is that you?

Regardless, I fully disagree with everything you typed. I'm sure double digit optimizations can (should) be done with this game. Also, the graphics are *fine*, but nothing to get excited over.

Optimization at the design level in this game could bring more than 100% performance improvement, this guy has no idea what he's talking about.

 

[Tam 212]

Randy, is that you?

Regardless, I fully disagree with everything you typed. I'm sure double digit optimizations can (should) be done with this game. Also, the graphics are *fine*, but nothing to get excited over.

Agreed. The new coat of paint provided by UE5 doesn't justify the regression in performance over BL3.

Optimization at the design level in this game could bring more than 100% performance improvement, this guy has no idea what he's talking about.

Make of this what you will but according to Randy Pitchford in his many posts on X re: BL4 performance and "optimization".

An excerpt of the thread:

“Every PC gamer must accept the reality of the relationship between their hardware and what the software they are running is doing…The game is pretty damn optimal - which means that the software is doing what we want without wasteful cycles on bad processes…It is a mistake to believe or expect that PCs between minimum specification and recommended specification can achieve all of extremely high frame rate, maximum/ultra features, and extremely high resolution.”

From looking at this and numerous other threads on the topic, I think you can most folks fall into one of three camps.
- Console players... it is what it is.
- Acceptance - this is the new norm to leverage heavy upscaling and frame gen in order to get better than console level performance. They'll still buy into this regardless because they want to play.
- Rejection - this is unacceptable as the new norm. Either this gets improved upon or no sale.

 

[Lounds]

Did anyone notice that Gearbox's recommended settings had the settings higher for the RX 6500 XT over the RX 6600 XT aiming for 60fps. I find this very hard to believe?!!!

 

[adisoftcafe]

Best hardware for this game: enjoy other games and buy this when it will be optimized !

 

[vvtunes]

Check this channel:
https://m.youtube.com/@ThreatInteractive/videos

 

[Bamda]

Perhaps play it in a few years when it's on sale and when performance has actually been optimized.

This has been my approach for as long as I can remember. I don’t really care what the game was like when it first came out because I never buy them right away. I wait until the price drops to a level I’m interested in, which is usually around $7.50. If the game is really good, I might go as high as $15.

 

[amstech]

Lots of youngbloods in here think their 3 year old GPU is going to be golden goose for 10 years. Nope.
Its refreshing and awesome to see a new game absolutely work you hardware to its core. Sure, driver and game updates will help in the future but I like to see new titles push the limits of visuals, polygon counts and particular NCS (non cell shaded) games like this. Eye candy galore. Let it rain baby!

 

[kira setsu]

None of the others offer as many work-acceleration tools as UE5. It’s strange to me that people don’t recognize the real reason studios use this engine: to save time and money.

But the worst part of this whole mess is that people keep buying this garbage. Reviewers like TPU's W1zzard and famous YouTubers in general are saying "this is the best game in the franchise", it's a fu*** disgrace.

but you wont make any money once your game releases and people realize it runs like straight garbage.

 

[loki1944]

Well that's another game to avoid at launch then!

Perhaps play it in a few years when it's on sale and when performance has actually been optimised.

Idk Borderlands 3 performance was never fixed.

 

[DanteSmith]

but you wont make any money once your game releases and people realize it runs like straight garbage.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case, especially with franchises that already have a reputation and fan base behind them.

 

[Tam 212]

Yup. It's been 6 years since the previous entry so gamers who are into this "shlooter" genre will have significant pent-up demand.

The game did have a 300K Steam peak in the first weekend and the 24-hour peak was still above 200K despite the now viral news regarding the perf issues with this title. And it still sits at Mixed with 65% Positive.

Even if 100K users demanded a refund on Steam, assuming 200K users bought just the base game and not the $100/$130 versions, that's a pretty substantial dollar amount of 14 with six zeroes behind it.

Who knows how many have bought in on Epic and console.

 

[gdavid65]

Eep!

I'll buy this game in a few years when it's like $30.. like most of the rest of the Borderlands franchise.

It doesn't even look that great.. It is cel-shaded FFS!

It's like "let us take a nicely rendered 3D world then stick some 2D cel-shading over the top and slaughter the performance while doing so".

From speaking to others, the gameplay is actually quite good, but why, oh why waste so much budget on poor engine.

 

[toooooot]

Interesting. One would think that simplified graphics would be easier on GPUs.
No, not with this game. I am guessing the engine treats these textures as typical AAA assets despite giving them clay like anime look.