Borderlands 4 Best Settings Guide

Borderlands 4 is gorgeous, loud, and heavy on Unreal Engine 5 features. That combo can tank FPS and add stutter if you leave the defaults alone. With a few smart tweaks, you’ll get smoother frame pacing, clearer visibility, and snappier input across the board.

Welcome to the Borderlands 4 best settings guide. We’ll focus on PC settings that deliver the biggest wins: upscalers, shadows, volumetrics, foliage, and latency options. Everything below is distilled from extensive testing and early post-patch observations, so this should help for most PC setups.

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Read our other Borderlands 4 guides:

• All Shift Codes
• Best Builds
• Beginner's Guide

System Requirements & What They Really Mean

BL4 is demanding. UE5 features plus bigger seamless spaces push both CPU and GPU, and SSD speeds matter for stutter. Before diving into the list of the best Borderlands 4 settings, it is expected of you to at least skim through the system requirements for the game to get an idea of how well it's going to run on your machine. Here are the system specs with our own notes on them:

Let’s break down some of these and learn what you should really expect, especially when it comes to recent generations of GPU and CPU usage cases:

• 2070-class at 1080p Low with upscaling can hover around 60 FPS, but native 1080p Low often dips into the mid-40s.
• 3080-class at 1080p High native hovers ±60; 1440p High with DLSS/TSR Quality sits ~60–70 and climbs with Performance mode.

CPU spikes during area transitions (shader comp/streaming) are normal right now; an SSD reduces the worst hitches.
The same applies to an AMD graphics card from the same year of release as Nvidia’s. And let’s not forget that, in 2025, you’re expected to have SSD for games.

Pre-Launch Tweaks

If you really want to squeeze out every drop of performance, there are some things you can do in your system prior to launching the game. We’ll focus on a few simple things here:

• Update your GPU drivers (NVIDIA/AMD/Intel) before first boot.
• Steam/Epic launch options:
  • -nostartupmovies to skip logos.
  • Optional: try -novolumetricfog (effects vary; full disable may not stick). BLOG20

The launch options are a great way to brute-force some of the specific Borderlands 4 video settings, and they’re traditionally used to skip the starting logo screens when you boot up the game.

Best Borderlands 4 Graphics Settings (PC)

The goal for these best Borderlands 4 graphics settings is to maintain crisp textures for readability while minimizing the heaviest effects (volumetrics, reflections, foliage) and reducing latency. This is going to ensure the best performance and less visual clutter.

Textures and AF are very important Borderlands 4 settings for FPS, as they keep enemies and loot readable. Volumetrics, cloud shadows, heavy reflections, and dense foliage are the real GPU drains here. Medium shadows avoid the “cardboard” look without wrecking performance. Choose the upscaler you prefer: DLSS Quality generally looks best; TSR Quality can look sharper to some eyes at 1080p.

Best Display & Performance Settings

Now, let’s focus some more on the best Borderlands 4 display settings. These control latency and frame pacing more than visuals. Nail these first.

The refresh rate should correspond to your monitor’s maximum refresh rate. It will basically limit the maximum FPS in the game, and it shouldn’t exceed the monitor’s refresh rate. Meanwhile, V-Sync smoothes the frame rate, but causes a small input delay in the worst-case scenario. So, unless you experience severe FPS drops, best to leave it off.

While not part of the best Borderlands 4 settings for FPS, you can turn on the Dynamic Resolution as a last resort. What it's going to do is it will automatically lower the game’s resolution until it matches the desired FPS. It could help maintain high frames per second, but it could be disorienting from the visual standpoint, as the game will get blurry from time to time.

Best Mouse & Sensitivity Settings

Mouse and sensitivity settings aren’t going to have any effect on the game’s performance. And since this is not exactly a competitive FPS, you should play with these settings only if the default ones seem uncomfortable. Here are our recommendations for the best settings to play Borderlands 4 and help you establish a consistent baseline from which to build muscle memory.

The baseline for the best Borderlands 4 mouse settings is as follows: 800 DPI, 1000 Hz, ADS 0.85, Vertical 1.0. Adjust General until you can strafe-track without overcorrecting.

Best Controller Settings (PC/Console)

Let’s do one for controller settings as well. It is a known fact that fast-paced FPS shooters can be tough to play with a controller, so finding the right settings will make the whole experience that much more enjoyable. We recommend prioritizing steady tracking and predictable curves.

If your gamepad is old and has drift, you should definitely play around with the Dead Zones to eliminate it, but make sure not to overdo it, as it will lead to input not registering.

HUD, Accessibility, and Audio Tweaks

Borderlands 4 is super colorful, and it practically vomits with pop-ups and screaming UI elements. We suggest tidying it up a bit with small UI changes to cut clutter during VFX spam.

Camera shaking is known to cause light nausea for some gamers. It’s the head-bobbing effect when you run or take damage. It’s best to turn things like that off.

Troubleshooting Tips and Tricks

Even after the day-one patch, the game can still have poor performance. Borderlands 4 is built on Unreal Engine 5, which means shader compilation, CPU spikes, and heavy GPU loads are all part of the picture. If you’re struggling to increase fps in Borderlands 4 and experiencing other things like game crashes, stutters, or low FPS, try these:

If you see rough FPS or hitching at first, give the game 10–15 minutes to stabilize before changing settings again. An SSD and updated drivers are practically mandatory, and BIOS updates can make or break stability on newer Intel CPUs. Once shaders are built and your system is tuned, Borderlands 4 runs much smoother than those early stutters suggest. BLOG20

Conclusion

This setup keeps Borderlands 4 crisp and responsive: high texture clarity, low post-process clutter, and aggressive cuts to volumetrics, foliage, and reflections. Use DLSS/FSR Quality at 1080p/1440p, keep shadows around Medium, and lean on Reflex for latency. Expect CPU spikes when streaming new areas on UE5; an SSD and sensible caps help smooth the ride.

F.A.Q.