Last Updated on September 12, 2025
BL4 Lag & Stuttering: Borderlands 4 has been out for a few hours, and I’ve been playing it. The world is beautiful, the tone has been set correctly, and there are a lot of things to do. Huge story mode and the best part, the loot, the legendary loot.
I am not surprised by the reviews on Steam (mostly negative at the time of writing), though it appears that it has now improved to a ‘mixed’ rating since the article was written, as the rating went up a whole 2 percent from 39%. A lot of the reviewers were experiencing issues with extremely beefy rigs, one of which had a 5090 and was struggling to push beyond 60 FPS without DLSS, or another claiming that the game ran at a smooth 70FPS with most of the settings turned down and frame generation being on, for a game that doesn’t really look much better or complex than its predecessor did six years ago other than being open world.
System Requirements
Here are the official system requirements from Gearbox:
Minimum System Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 / Windows 11
- Processor: Intel Core i7-9700 / AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 / AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT / Intel Arc A580
- Storage: 100 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system. Requires 8 CPU Cores for processor. Requires 8 GB VRAM for graphics. SSD storage required
Recommended System Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 / Windows 11
- Processor: Intel Core i7-12700 / AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
- Memory: 32 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT / Intel Arc B580
- Storage: 100 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system. SSD storage required
Don’t let the low system requirements fool you; they don’t exactly do justice to what is actually happening in-game. On a 3080Ti and Core i7-12700, my friend can achieve around 60-70 FPS after toning down the settings. So the recommended requirements are maybe not correct? Or optimizations are needed?
Below, I have written a few optimizations that I applied on my computer to make the game run better. Please remember that these are basic tweaks that bring improvements to almost every PC Gaming title. If you still face problems after this, I recommend you wait for the developers to push an update.
Change Graphic Control Panel Settings
Here are a few tweaks for both Nvidia and AMD Users that will provide instantly boost your FPS in Borderlands 4:
For Nvidia Users:
Open up Nvidia’s Control Panel. Right-click on desktop > click Nvidia control panel click Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings. Find “Borderlands 4”, you can manually add the game if it’s not in the list
Now, make the following changes:
- Monitor Tech: G-Sync (If available)
- Maximum Pre-rendered frames: 2
- Threaded optimization: On
- Power Management: Prefer Maximum Performance
- Texture Filtering – Quality: Performance
- Low Lateny Mode: Low (High or Ultra makes sense only for PvP Games)
Nvidia Low Latency Mode is a feature that is found in Nvidia’s Control Panel. It is designed to help reduce input latency on Nvidia graphics cards systems. Low Latency Mode can be used in games or any other application where you need to reduce the amount of time it takes for your inputs to be registered. Note: Frame generation will not work with Low Latency Mode enabled.
For AMD Users
- Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use Application settings
- Anti-aliasing Method: Multisampling
- Morphological Filtering: Off
- Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Use application settings
- Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
- Surface Format Optimization: On
- Wait for V-sync: Off
- OpenGL Triple Buffering: Off
- Shader Cache: AMD optimized
- Tesselation Mode: Override application settings
- Maximum Tesselation Level: Off
- GPU Workload: Graphics
- Chill: Off
- Frame Rate Target Control: Disabled
Update Your Device Drivers
Nvidia has already released a full-fledged update that delivers day-0 optimizations for Borderlands 4. The Driver version is 581.29.
Disable Game Mode in Windows 10 & Enable in Windows 11
Allocates more priority to the game, and for AMD users, it enables them to not park their cores for better performance.
To enable game mode, go to Settings > Gaming > Game Mode. Turn this off or on one by one and compare the performance.
Debloat Your Windows Installation
There are a few different ways to debloat Windows. One is to use a tool like Sycnex Script on GitHub; this utility scans your system for unnecessary programs and offers to remove them for you. Another option is to go through the Control Panel’s Programs and Features list and uninstall any programs you don’t need or want.
Syncnex can be used to remove:
- Misc Bloatware in Windows
- Disable Copilot AI
- Disable Edge PDF
- Uninstall OneDrive
- Disable Telemetry
Disable in-game overlays
Discord
If you are using Discord like me, then I’d recommend you change a few things. One such thing is, discord overlay, it’s not really something you need at all times. I use a two-monitor setup, so the overlay is useless for me. It is known for causing FPS-related issues.
Disable Hardware Acceleration in Discord
Open Discord Click on User Settings > Appearance, Click on the Hardware Acceleration radio, this will turn it off.
Disable in-game Discord Overlay
Open Discord Go to Overlay under App Settings Click on the “Enable in-game overlay”, this will turn it off.
Windows Game Bar
Click Start > Settings > Gaming On the Game Bar, set “Record game clips, screenshots, and broadcast using Game bar” to off. Now head to the Captures tab set the “Record the background while I’m playing a game” to Off. You can also test turning Game Mode on or off, one by one.
Increase Game Priority
This is an old-school method of boosting FPS in certain games; this only affects CPU relying Games.
Press CTLR + Shift + ESC to open task manager Locate Borderlands 4 and right-click > go to details Now right-click on the process’s .exe file and set priority to “high”.
This will prioritize your game over other windows applications and provide you with a little boost.
Update Windows
The recent couple updates were weird and broke a lot of games, to fix those issues, Windows has already pushed out hotfixes and you can download them right away. If you are running an older version of Windows, I’d recommend you download the updated version.
Fix Borderlands 4 Lagging on Windows 11
These steps are specific to Windows 11 users.
Disable Core-Isolation on Windows 11
Core Isolation is a new feature built-in Windows 11 that protects your PC from untrusted applications and drivers. The tradeoff is obviously the performance. But this will not be an issue for anyone who doesn’t download anything from untrusted sites.
Disable HAGS
Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is a hit or miss. It introduces higher frame times for many games. You can disable it by searching “Graphic Settings” in your Windows Search and change this setting from there.
Here’s how you can disable it:
Click on Start Menu button and select settings Click Privacy and Security > Windows Security > Device Security Here you will find Core Isolation, click on Core isolation details On the next screen, you will find a radio button for “Memory Integrity”, just turn it off.
You’ve successfully disabled VBS on Windows 11. Many users on Reddit have reported this to significantly improve performance for many games. We’re talking about improvements of about 20-30 fps straightaway.
Enable Game Mode
We’ve noticed considerable improvements in the Game Mode in Windows 11. For Windows 10, we suggest disabling both Game mode and game bar, whereas this option should be enabled on Windows 11.
To Enable: Just type game mode in search and enable it.
How to fix stuttering in Borderlands 4
Disable Microsoft Device Association Root Enumerator
This is a Microsoft service that used to cause micro stutters in Elden Ring, turns out disabling it works for Borderlands 4 too.
To do so: Launch Device Manager, search for it using Windows Search Click on Software Devices to expand the list Locate “Microsoft Device Association Root Enumerator” > Right-click and disable it
Move the game to SSD or faster HDD
A Reddit user reported constant stuttering in Borderlands 4, someone asked him for his specs and turns out the guy had an SSD for C Drive but the game was installed on the 5400 RPM drive. The user moved his game to the SSD and the issue was fixed.
Close any memory-hogging applications
Open up the task manager and check your memory and disk usage. Close all applications (non-Windows) that are eating your memory and using a disk drive. If you are still stuttering with everything looking fine, you should probably wait for the hotfix update, which should be pushed out shortly.
Use Process Lasso to limit CPU usage
Process Lasso is software that helps you limit the CPU usage of a particular app. Download the software and use it accordingly. As mentioned earlier it can also be used to turn off hyperthreading, that can also fix stuttering and frame time issues in some games. I was able to drop my CPU usage by almost 20% after using the software.
These settings and optimizations were tested on PCs with the following configuration:
- RTX 4060
- RTX 3080
- RTX 5070Ti
- RTX 3060
I can explain it in a few words. It is on UE5. Devs used the terrible default settings instead of optimizing. Borderlands games and awful performance at launch are an iconic duo. In legendary Borderlands style, the game fails to launch and run correctly a few times, even my friends with beefy PCs had the same issue. I tried joining their instance and my game instantly crashed. On top of that, horrible FPS if you are on the old gen cards. On 5070ti I am able to squeeze over 100 FPS with max settings, however as soon as I turn off DLSS and frame generation, it another story.
I am just hoping this game doesn’t disappoint us.