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

With the 9900K sitting at 5.0 GHz, the fact that the 11700K only does single core 5.0 GHz shouldn't matter if the IPC gains on the core help push the needle. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to do much in Borderlands.

 

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

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  • inighthawki - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link

    It's not about the cost of electricity. High power draw typically translates to a lot of heat. My PC is on the upper floor and heat accumulates in my room and it gets extremely hot while gaming in the summer, even with AC on.

    As you stick to the same process node and continue to crank up the frequency, it gets hotter and hotter and hotter. Skylake didn't run even close to the temps that these new CPUs run at.

    And yes, even Zen3 produces a lot of heat when under load.
  • YB1064 - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link

    How did you conclude that there exist thermal hotspots? Is it an educated guess or did you actually measure a temperature profile? If it was a measurement, was it a thermal image of the socket area of the rear PCB, multiple thermal probes? BTW, your argument does sound logical.
  • ThereSheGoes - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Aaannddd. these results are obviously flawed. https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hard...
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  • blppt - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link

    Wow, couldn't even match the 5800X. AMD really knocked it out of the park with the 5xxx series.
  • FreckledTrout - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link

    Fell short while using considerably more power.
  • Azix - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link

    I wouldn't call it knocking it out of the part if a 14nm chip is right behind them.
  • DV8_MKD - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link

    Yeah, "right behind them" with 20% more power, smh
  • inighthawki - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link

    TDP is not a measurement of power draw. The 11700k peak power usage is over 2x the 5800x
  • lmcd - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link

    Yea if it was only 20% behind in power draw, that'd be a win at this point.

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