Steam Deck runs Borderlands 4 at up to 40 FPS with GPU overclock and Frame Generation but suffers from input lag and stuttering
Borderlands 4 has been surrounded by controversy ever since it was announced, largely due to comments made by the parent company’s CEO, Randy Pitchford of Gearbox. Another controversy erupted recently when he said that the physical version of Borderlands 4 on the Switch 2 won’t be fully contained on the cartridge, meaning it will require an internet download. Now that the game has finally launched, it is once again facing performance issues, something Pitchford himself has acknowledged.
Although Randy was specifically referring to PC performance, popular YouTuber ETA Prime tested the latest Borderlands game on the Steam Deck to see how the new looter-shooter RPG performs on one of the most popular handhelds.
So right off the bat, the results weren’t encouraging. At 800p resolution with FSR set to Performance, the game struggled to maintain even 20 FPS, often dipping between 18–22 FPS. Particle effects caused major slowdowns, and aiming at this framerate felt nearly impossible.
Midway through the video, the YouTuber switched to their game capture device, essentially streaming the game at 720p. Turning on frame generation pushed the performance closer to 30 FPS, but it introduced severe input latency, making the game sluggish and unplayable. Even after raising the Steam Deck’s GPU clock speed to 1600 MHz, the game still suffered from input lag and stuttering, although it managed to reach around 40 FPS.
ETA Prime concluded that while Borderlands 4 technically runs on the Steam Deck, it isn’t enjoyable in its current state. Unless future patches bring optimisations, players hoping to dive into the game on Valve’s handheld may want to hold off, they said.
For a closer look at Borderlands 4's performance on the Steam Deck, you can watch the full video linked below.
Source(s)
