That joke about how Epic Games Store users are just beta testing Borderlands 3 for next year’s Steam purchasers might not just be a joke after all.

Those of you playing Borderlands 3 on PC (like myself) will no doubt have encountered a few of the performance issues plaguing the game. To help you guys out, I’ve decided to compile a list of common problems and how to solve them.

In-Game Stuttering

For PC players, the same issue could probably stem from poor optimisation as some people have noted that they have been able to run more demanding games just fine. Here are a few things you can try to eliminate the stuttering:

• Close the Epic Games Store launcher after you start the game. It doesn’t disturb online functionalities so no need to worry about that.
• Set Texture Streaming to Low or Medium.
• Set Overall Quality to Very Low and then fine-tune each advanced graphics options.
• If you’re using a GeForce GPU, try rolling back to the previous version of your GeForce driver.

The Most Optimal Frame Rates For High-End Rigs

If you want to run Borderlands 3 with the highest frame rates possible, these recommended optimal settings will sort you out:

• DX11 > DX12

• Anti-aliasing: Temporal AA

• FidelityFX Sharpening On

• Motion blur: your choice

• Texture streaming: Ultra

• Anistropic Filtering: 16x

• Material Complexity: Medium

• Shadows: Ultra (medium for lower-end)

• Draw distance: High (medium for lower-end)

• Environmental Detail: Ultra

• Terrain Detail: Ultra

• Foliage: Ultra (medium for lower-end)

• Character detail: Ultra

• Ambient Occlusion: Ultra

• Volumetric Fog: Medium. The most intensive setting according to tests. Off if needed, but it takes away from the level’s atmosphere.

• Screen space reflections: Medium (off for lower-end)

Game Won’t Load In DirectX 12 Mode

Despite Gearbox partnering with AMD to fully optimise the game for the latest AMD hardware, it still struggles to run the game on DX12. If you’re one of those people stuck at the screen where Claptrap dances, can’t start the game at all or facing frustratingly long load times, follow these steps to manually switch to DX11:

• Go to My Documents
• My Games
• Borderlands 3
• Saved
• Config
• WindowsNoEditor
• Open GameUserSettings using Notepad
• Find “PreferredGraphicsAPI“
• Change ‘DX12‘ to ‘DX11‘
• Save

It’s worth noting that there are some players who report that only the initial loading of the game (Claptrap dancing screen) takes a long time. After that, the loading screens are bearable.

Personally, I’d recommend running the game in DX11 until AMD and Gearbox finds a fix for the DX12 issues.

Console Issues

Some console players, even the ones playing on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, have reported serious framerate dips and freezes when it gets too frantic or when someone pauses the game to change weapons.

Hopefully, that will get fixed too.

Cutscenes And Character Selection Screen Appear Cropped, Misplaced Or Entirely Black

Issues with screen cropping are being reported by players using 21:9 displays. The only known solution so far is to simply disable FidelityFX Sharpening in the graphics settings.

Screen crop issue on 21:9 display. Image from Reddit user daronmal.

That’s all the issues I’ve found so far. Props to DSOGaming, PCGamesN, Hardware Unboxed, and PC Gaming Wiki for sharing the fixes.