Date:
Monday , November 30, 2009
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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Borderlands Gameplay Performance and IQ

Borderlands is a colorful co-op shooter in more ways than one, coming to retail after a lengthy development cycle including at least one redesign. It uses a familiar graphics engine, but with some tweaks and upgrades which have brought with it some unexpected performance challenges. We play Borderlands with 9 of today's best video cards.

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Graphics Options in Borderlands

The video options menu in Borderlands has come under fire from some PC gamers for being too "consolized" and not giving enough customization options. But the truth is, compared to some other games to come out recently, Borderlands has a fairly robust graphics menu. The actual operation of that menu is somewhat cramped and the execution obtuse, but the settings present are mostly effective.

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Resolution and Anisotropic Filtering

The resolution option allows for the selection of the resolution in which to run the game. Ideally, this option should be set to the native resolution of the monitor, in the case of an LCD display. You CRT holdouts can just choose whichever resolution pleases you. The Anisotropic filtering option allows gamers to select what level of texture filtering to use, 2X, 4X, 8X, and 16X AF. "Off" is also an option.

Dynamic Shadows

The dynamic shadows option toggles on or off the use of dynamic "sun"-generated shadows throughout the game. This includes landscape shadows, objects shadows, and self-shadows. This option has the single greatest impact on image both quality and performance of any of the quality options in this game. It is a toggle option, so available settings are ON and OFF.

Bullet Decals

This option toggles the use of bullet-hole decal textures to simulate the impact of bullets, pellets, and rockets on dynamic and landscape options in Borderlands. During heavy firefights, the option can have a performance impact, but most of the time, it is not noticeable. It is just a small detail that we like to see, and most of the time, it doesn’t hurt to just leave it on. It is a toggle option, so available settings are ON and OFF.

Foliage Quality

This option would be more accurately called "Foliage Depth." It limits the depth to which foliage objects such as leaves, shrubs, grass, and other small plant decorations are draw. Available options are "High" and "Low."

Texture Quality

The texture quality option allows gamers to select lower-resolution textures for use on weapons, landscape objects, buildings, and some other objects. Note that not all objects are affected by this setting. Change this setting if you are limited on video memory. Available options are "High", "Medium", and "Low."

Game Detail

Throughout our testing, we were unable to determine precisely what this option actually does. We tested it in a variety of environments and conditions, but we were unable to detect any change in image quality. Available options are "High", "Medium", and "Low."

Ambient Occlusion

The ambient occlusion option toggles the screen-space ambient occlusion option, which enables a form of localized shading intended to enhance contrast and improve lighting between objects in a given scene. Basically, it is a way for surfaces to occlude (block) ambient light, causing shadows in tight spaces. It is a toggle option, so available settings are ON and OFF.

Bloom

The bloom lighting option allows users to toggle lighting blooms, which is a post-processing effect intended to enhance contrast and brightness. In practice in Borderlands, it makes a very subtle change. Gamers with framerate issues should disable this option first. In our experience, it gave us a small FPS boost with very little detectable effect on image quality. It is a toggle option, so available settings are ON and OFF.

Depth of Field

The depth of field option allows gamers to toggle the blur effect that is used when looking through the iron sights of a weapon. When you use the iron sights, the game focuses on what you have in your sights and blurs out everything else. It is a toggle option, so available settings are ON and OFF.

Flare Outs

The flare outs option toggles the overexposed lighting effect used on light sources to make them appear brighter and more vibrant. It is a toggle option, so available settings are ON and OFF.

Anti-Aliasing Support

Borderlands shipped without anti-aliasing (AA) support for the PC. Since its launch, however, both NVIDIA and AMD have shipped new drivers for their video cards. NVIDIA provided us with the ForceWare 195.50 beta software, which they claimed would enable support for control-panel forced AA on NVIDIA video cards. The 195.55 driver became available later that week, but has since been replaced by 195.62 WHQL. When we asked AMD about driver-based AA support for Borderlands, they responded that they would look into it. As of now, we have not heard back from them on that issue.

Unfortunately, we experienced an issue with AA using the NVIDIA driver which forced us to leave it disabled. We’ll have more details on that issue throughout this evaluation.

Testing Borderlands

To test Borderlands, we ran our character through the "Eridian Promontory" level. Due to the long draw distances, constant snow effect, highly-detailed enemies, and densely detailed landscape, this level stood out to us as the single most demanding stretch of space in the game. It took us about 10 minutes to fight our way through the mountain pass. There is plenty of combat, plenty of loot, and plenty of containers to scavenge.