Last Thoughts

Although Borderlands 2 can be a bit demanding in certain scenarios, most gamers will be happy to know that playable frame rates tin exist achieved on a relatively affordable gaming setup. Unsurprisingly, Nvidia'southward graphics cards generally outperformed what would usually be considered AMD's equivalents.

For those gaming at 1680x1050 or similar resolutions, we found that very small GPUs like the Radeon Hard disk drive 6770 (aka the 5770) were able to deliver decent results, but again, Nvidia'south performance advantage immune upkeep GeForce cards such equally the GTX 460 to produce 58fps, besting the Hd 6850 and HD 7770.

At 1920x1200, the GTX 660 Ti could exist considered overkill as the GTX 660 was merely ane% slower while beingness xxx% cheaper. That said, the GTX 660 Ti helps fill up that gap by shipping with a gratuitous copy of Borderlands 2, so you'll have to determine what works out to exist the best overall value in your situation.

Things look a trivial improve for the GTX 660 Ti when playing at 2560x1600, as it held a 12fps atomic number 82 over the GTX 660. Factor in the free game, and this seems like the all-time value going if you lot're looking to play Borderlands two at really high resolutions. Nevertheless, the GTX 660 nonetheless delivered a solid 52fps.

Although you may need an Nvidia carte du jour to max the game at 2560x1600 with more than 60fps, AMD'southward mid-range and loftier-finish GPUs offered playable results at all 3 tested resolutions. Additionally, thanks to a modernistic, nigh Radeon owners volition exist able to savor Borderlands ii in all its glory with PhysX enabled.

In fact, based on our testing, Radeon cards seem to handle PhysX slightly better than their GeForce counterparts. When running Borderlands 2 at 1920x1200, the Hard disk drive 7970 only took a xv% performance striking later on enabling PhysX (dropping from 72fps to 61fps), whereas the GTX 680 fell nineteen% from 74fps to 60fps.

Nosotros were a scrap worried nigh AMD's GPUs going into this because Borderlands ii is a "TWIMTBP" title, simply it seems nosotros should've placed our concerns on the company's CPUs. Dual-core chips like the Phenom II X2 couldn't provide playable results, the Phenom II X4 and X6 were on par with Intel'due south onetime Core i7-920, while the FX series was roughly 20fps behind newer Core i7 parts. Additionally, Borderlands 2 responded far better when overclocking the i7-3770K than the FX-8150.

It seems your CPU choice may be more crucial to Borderlands 2's functioning than your GPU choice and you'll definitely desire to play with a quad-core chip. For the best value philharmonic, we recommend an Ivy Bridge Core i5 with the GTX 660 or GTX 660 Ti, depending on your resolution and preferred frame rate.