Best Borderlands 4 Settings for FPS and Performance
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The best Borderlands 4 settings for FPS keep Textures as high as your VRAM allows while lowering Lighting and Reflections — the two Unreal Engine 5 costs you can actually control — and turning on DLSS or FSR upscaling. Borderlands 4 is heavier than past Borderlands games because it moved to UE5 with always-on Lumen and Nanite, so the wins come from scaling those down rather than chasing every slider.
Do this first: the shader cache and settle time
Before you touch a single graphics slider, fix the thing that silently caps performance. Unreal Engine 5 compiles shaders on demand, and a too-small GPU shader cache makes it re-compile the same ones repeatedly.
- NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D Settings → Shader Cache Size → 100 GB (or Unlimited).
- After any settings change, play 15 minutes before judging — Borderlands 4 recompiles shaders in the background when settings change, so the first few minutes always look worse than the real result.
Skipping this makes every other setting below look worse than it is.
Best Borderlands 4 graphics settings
Set these in Settings → Graphics / Video. Exact labels may shift slightly between patches, but the categories are stable:
| Setting | Recommended | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Display Mode | Fullscreen (exclusive) | Lower latency than borderless |
| Upscaling | DLSS / FSR / XeSS — Quality | Biggest single FPS gain; Balanced at 1440p+ |
| Frame Generation | Off until 60+ real FPS | Adds latency at low base frame rates |
| Lighting / Global Illumination | Low–Medium | Heaviest cost; Lumen can’t be disabled, only scaled |
| Reflections | Low | Large saving, minor visual loss |
| Textures | High — but below where VRAM fills | Keep off the VRAM limit to avoid spikes |
| Shadows | Medium | Meaningful cost, little visible loss |
| Volumetric Fog / Effects | Medium | Helps in dense combat |
| Anti-aliasing | Handled by upscaler (DLSS/FSR) | No need to stack extra AA |
| Motion Blur | Off | Hides target detail, adds perceived latency |
| Depth of Field | Off or Low | Small gain, clearer image |
Watch VRAM in an FPS overlay during real play. If it sits at 95-100%, drop Textures one tier — that removes the slow-building spike pattern more reliably than any other single change.
Upscaling and Frame Generation, explained simply
- Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS) renders the game at a lower internal resolution and reconstructs it to your display resolution. On Quality the image loss is small and the FPS gain is large — leave it on. Use Balanced at 1440p and 4K if you need more.
- Frame Generation is different: it inserts generated frames between real ones. It raises the counter but does nothing for input latency, and below ~60 real FPS it makes stutter feel worse. Turn it on only once your real frame rate is already high. The trade-off is covered in frame generation input lag explained.
Windows and system settings
Graphics settings only go so far if the system underneath is fighting you:
- Enable XMP/EXPO so your RAM runs at its rated speed — a UE5 streaming world is sensitive to memory bandwidth. See how to enable XMP or EXPO.
- Install on an SSD (NVMe ideally) and keep 15-20% free — mechanical drives cause traversal hitches. See NVMe vs SATA SSD for gaming.
- Use the High Performance / Ultimate power plan so the CPU doesn’t downclock mid-fight.
- Cap your FPS a few frames below your worst-case low with RTSS — a steady cap feels smoother than a swinging average. See best FPS cap for low latency.
- Clean-install your GPU driver if performance dropped after an update — clean install GPU drivers with DDU.
For the deeper input-latency layer — timer resolution, low-latency mode and frame pacing — start with how to minimize input delay for competitive gaming.
If it still stutters
Higher FPS and smooth frame time aren’t the same thing. If you’re getting the frame rate but still feel hitching, that’s the shader cache, VRAM, or streaming — walk through the dedicated Borderlands 4 stuttering fix, which covers frame-time diagnosis, the cache rebuild, and FPS caps in detail.
Related guides
Frequently asked questions
What are the best Borderlands 4 graphics settings for FPS?
Set Upscaling to DLSS or FSR Quality, drop Lighting (global illumination) one or two tiers, Reflections to Low, Shadows and Volumetric Fog to Medium, and Motion Blur off. Keep Textures as high as your VRAM allows without filling it. Lumen and Nanite can't be disabled in Borderlands 4, so lowering Lighting and Reflections is where the biggest FPS gains come from. This flattens frame time as well as raising the average.
Should I use Frame Generation in Borderlands 4?
Only if you already hold 60+ FPS before turning it on. Frame Generation inserts interpolated frames to raise the number on your counter, but it adds latency and makes stutter feel worse when your base frame rate is low. Above 60 real FPS it smooths high-refresh play nicely; below that, leave it off and lower Lighting or Upscaling to get your real frame rate up first.
Why is my Borderlands 4 FPS so low even on a good GPU?
Two usual causes. First, the shader cache: if your GPU's shader cache size is too small, Unreal Engine 5 re-compiles shaders constantly, which caps performance and stutters — raise NVIDIA Shader Cache Size to 100 GB. Second, Lumen: Borderlands 4's global illumination is always on and very expensive, so a high Lighting setting can bottleneck even strong cards. Lower Lighting, enable upscaling, and give the game 15 minutes to settle after any change.
What CPU and GPU do I need to run Borderlands 4 well?
Borderlands 4 is demanding for a looter-shooter because of Unreal Engine 5. For a steady 60 FPS at 1080p with upscaling on, aim for a 6-core Ryzen 5 / Core i5 from the last few generations, 16 GB of RAM (32 GB is better), and at least an RTX 3060 / RX 6600-class GPU with 8 GB of VRAM. An SSD is effectively required for the streaming to keep up. Above that, upscaling and a lower Lighting tier let mid-range cards push high-refresh frame rates.
Does lowering settings reduce stuttering in Borderlands 4 too?
Yes — lower settings reduce both the average GPU load and the VRAM pressure that causes spikes, so a leaner preset stutters less as well as running faster. The two are linked: keeping Textures under your VRAM limit and Lighting at a tier your card handles removes the slow-building spike pattern. For the dedicated stutter walkthrough, including the shader cache fix and FPS caps, see the Borderlands 4 stuttering guide.