Gaming Tests: Borderlands 3

As a big Borderlands fan, having to sit and wait six months for the EPIC Store exclusive to expire before we saw it on Steam felt like a long time to wait. The fourth title of the franchise, if you exclude the TellTale style-games, BL3 expands the universe beyond Pandora and its orbit, with the set of heroes (plus those from previous games) now cruising the galaxy looking for vaults and the treasures within. Popular Characters like Tiny Tina, Claptrap, Lilith, Dr. Zed, Zer0, Tannis, and others all make appearances as the game continues its cel-shaded design but with the graphical fidelity turned up. Borderlands 1 gave me my first ever taste of proper in-game second order PhysX, and it’s a high standard that continues to this day.

BL3 works best with online access, so it is filed under our online games section. BL3 is also one of our biggest downloads, requiring 100+ GB. As BL3 supports resolution scaling, we are using the following settings:

  • 360p Very Low, 1440p Very Low, 4K Very Low, 1080p Badass

BL3 has its own in-game benchmark, which recreates a set of on-rails scenes with a variety of activity going on in each, such as shootouts, explosions, and wildlife. The benchmark outputs its own results files, including frame times, which can be parsed for our averages/percentile data.

AnandTech Low Resolution
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
Low Quality
High Resolution
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
Max Quality
Average FPS
95th Percentile

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

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  • Spunjji - Sunday, November 8, 2020 - link

    IO die is the same between all of them - they probably just haven't churned enough chiplets out yet. Those top-end chips probably need a high bin to reach their intended clocks and power levels, too.
  • lmcd - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link

    That seems like a mistake then -- should've released a 5890 and 5940 with lower clocks. At some point professionals are buying for IPC, thread count, and base clock speed.
  • Qasar - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link

    how is that a mistake ? if no need to change the IO die yet, why change anything ?
  • Spunjji - Sunday, November 8, 2020 - link

    On launch? Not really.

    If they're still unavailable a month or two from now, I'll be greatly disappointed.
  • Machinus - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Looks like a great set of chips for anyone who gets one mailed to them directly from AMD.

    Good luck buying one in a store.
  • danbob999 - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    480p Low quality gaming benchmarks? Really? Someone really play Civ6 with those settings?
    What's the point? Who cares if CPU X has 454 fps while Y only does 322?
  • Hxx - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    those are unrealistic scenarios just to showcase the IPC gains over prev gen and competition. But yeah normally you would pick the resolution you are playing at and go from there. In this case at 1080p / 1440p it trades blows with Intel in most titles.
  • silverblue - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    I'm not sure why the test revolves around frame rate, and not turn time. To use Gamers Nexus as a source, the 5950X completes a turn in 26.6 seconds, whereas the 10900K does it in 30.9 (29.3 OC to 5.2GHz), and the 3950X in 32.4. So, in this one test, the 10900K takes 16% longer, and the 3950X 22%.
  • Spunjji - Sunday, November 8, 2020 - link

    Yeah, I was a bit confused by not seeing turn times for Civ as that's the really big drag in late game scenarios.
  • ExarKun333 - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Zen 3 feels a lot lot Core 2 ~ 14 years ago. Wow, very impressive.

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