While it did have its share of controversial story choices,Borderlands 3was 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 ofBorderlands 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 withBorderlands 3.
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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 16GBand 6800 XT 16GB cards were both able to playBorderlands 3in 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. TheNvidia GeForce RTX 3090 24GBcard can also just barely reach 60 FPS at 4K inBorderlands 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.
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 afterBorderlands 3, likeDoom Eternal, perform far better on the two card lineups. Nvidia and AMD’s top cards both reach over 140 FPS in4K inDoom Eternal, 80-100 withCall of Duty: Modern Warfare, andForza Horizon 4surges past 160 FPS with AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT.
Unfortunately, this news didn’t come as much of a surprise to many ardentBorderlands 3players. When the game launched, players on the major consoles and PC experienced a number ofgraphical issues withBorderlands 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 inBorderlands 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 3is available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Stadia, with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions to launch alongside the respective consoles.
