2K and Gearbox Software’s action role-playing first-person looter shooter, Borderlands 4, is now available for PC, and we’ve put together the best settings for getting optimized performance on mid-end system specs and the Steam Deck.
Before we delve into the best settings for the PC version of Borderlands 4, make sure you’ve updated your GPU drivers and Windows to their latest respective versions. Additionally, disable or close any unnecessary background applications in order to reduce the CPU overhead as much as possible. The settings detailed ahead should provide a more optimized balance between graphics and frame rate compared to the presets available in-game.
Borderlands 4 Best Settings
The settings below are there to serve as a broad starting point for further optimization based on your specific hardware specs. As a result, you may need to further tweak some settings until you find a sweet spot based on your display’s refresh rate and the overall performance you seek.
VISUALS: BASIC
- Display Mode: Windowed Fullscreen
- Resolution: as per the max resolution of your display or preference
- Limit Frame Rate: Off on a VRR/G-Sync supported display, else set to preferred target frame rate
- Custom FPS Limit: 140
- Vertical Sync: Off on a VRR/G-Sync supported display, otherwise set to match frame rate limit
- Field of View: 110 (or as per preference)
- Vehicle Field of View: 110 (or as per preference)
VISUALS: ADVANCED
- Upscaling Method: DLSS on supported GPUs, TSR otherwise
- Upscaling Quality: Quality
- Spatial Upscaling Quality: Disabled
- Scene Capture Quality: Full Resolution
- Frame Generation: Off
- HLOD Loading Range: Far
- Geometry Quality: Medium
- Texture Quality: High
- Textures Streaming Speed: Very High
- Anisotropic Filtering Quality: x16
- Foliage Density: Low
- Volumetric Fog: Low
- Volumetric Cloud: Low
- Shadow Quality: Medium
- Directional Shadow Quality: Medium
- Volumetric Cloud Shadows: Disabled
- Lighting Quality: High
- Reflections Quality: Medium
- Shading Quality: High
- Post-Process Quality: High
- Motion Blur Amount: 0.0
- Motion Blur Quality: Off
How Does Borderlands 4 Run On Steam Deck?
VISUALS: BASIC
- Display Mode: Windowed Fullscreen
- Resolution: as per the max resolution of your display or preference
- Limit Frame Rate: Off on a VRR/G-Sync supported display, else set to preferred target frame rate
- Custom FPS Limit: 140
- Vertical Sync: Off on a VRR/G-Sync supported display, otherwise set to match frame rate limit
- Field of View: 110 (or as per preference)
- Vehicle Field of View: 110 (or as per preference)
VISUALS: ADVANCED
- Upscaling Method: TSR
- Upscaling Quality: Ultra Performance
- Spatial Upscaling Quality: Disabled
- Scene Capture Quality: Low
- Frame Generation: Off
- HLOD Loading Range: Near
- Geometry Quality: Low
- Texture Quality: Low
- Textures Streaming Speed: Medium
- Anisotropic Filtering Quality: Off
- Foliage Density: Off
- Volumetric Fog: Low
- Volumetric Cloud: Low
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Directional Shadow Quality: Low
- Volumetric Cloud Shadows: Disabled
- Lighting Quality: Low
- Reflections Quality: Low
- Shading Quality: Low
- Post-Process Quality: Low
- Motion Blur Amount: 0.0
- Motion Blur Quality: Off
As seen in the above video, Borderlands 4’s frame rate tends to fluctuate between 15 to 25 fps on the Steam Deck, even at the lowest possible settings. As such, we consider the game unplayable on Valve’s handheld device.
