Borderlands DSR issue-will lock @60hz w/o desktop res change

[MordecaiW]

I'm playing borderlands for the first time and wanted to play with lighboost on my 120hz monitor, but I can't seem to get the game to play in anything higher than 60hz, when Lightboost requires ideally 100-120hz. I'm using a BENQ XL2420t so I have to use strobelight to get Lightboost working, but the game just doesnt seem to want to run in anything other than 60hz, and there is nothing in the config files for setting monitor refresh. When you turn v-sync on via the config files, it locks at 60hz instead of the actual monitor's 120hz refresh rate actually! I'm on a 980ti, and have "prefer mxaimum refresh" set globally in the nvidia control panel.

I saw a comment from the Chief Blur Buster from last year where he specifically mentions Borderlands in reference to Lightboost:

"But if you're just doing a solo game of many games -- like Borderlands (fast turning with high-contrast lines) or Bioshock Infinite (on those "rollercoasters") -- then the experience can be far better with strobing if you're using a strobed monitor with excellent color quality -- provided you're using VSYNC ON and making sure stroberate == refreshrate == framerate at all times (and using a properly adjusted 1000Hz or 2000Hz mouse, to eliminate mouse microstutters whose visibility are amplified by strobing). If you're seeking the "Old Sega Arcade Machine" fluidity or the "Nintendo NES butter smooth panning on a CRT" perfect motion 60fps@60Hz fluidity effect, at the least possible motion blur, you definitely want strobing and VSYNC ON -- while using a GPU that doesn't slow down below framerate. And setting the strobe rate lower, if necessary, to assure the framerate==refreshrate==stroberate lock necessary for the perfect-motion effect."

This gave me hope that people have actually gotten this to work properly, but I cannot seem to find a way to get the game out of it's locked 60hz and that is preventing me from doing this. Anyone know how to play this awesome game with Lightboost properly?

**EDIT: updated thread title to reflect actual cause of issue, in case someone else comes across this issue and is searching for help.

[RealNC]

If it has borderless windowed mode, use that. It will then use the desktop's refresh rate. This will probably increase input lag though, unless this game is affected by the "fullscreen optimizations" setting of Windows 10. Enable that setting in the file properties of the game's exe and see if helps. You will know if it helps if you can see tearing with vsync off in borderless windowed. If you can see no tearing, then that setting has no effect and that means you get more input lag.

Also, you need to uncap the framerate of the game. It's capped to 62FPS by default. See:

https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Borderlan ... frame_rate

[Chief Blur Buster]

I had no problems running LightBoost with Borderlands back in the day.

It works wonderfully well -- the sharp contrasts and lines of Borderlands really noticeably improves with LightBoost, especially if you refrain from doing flick-turns and take your time to enjoy the scenery during turning -- you begin to notice lots more detail all over the place. If you're solo gaming Borderlands, then the few milliseconds extra lag doesn't really matter much -- you adapt to it -- unless you're super sensitive to it.

I don't remember what I did, but, I did:
-- I used ToastyX Strobelight
-- I changed the display mode to 1920x1080
-- I used VSYNC ON, since I was paying solo and I wanted the "CRT arcade motion effect" at that particular moment (motion quality prioritized over competitive gaming lag).

I can't remember now, but I might have temporarily deleted the 60Hz mode to force the game to run in the only Hz available (the LightBoost-enabled Hz). If you get permanently stuck in LightBoost, remember you can unplug your monitor for 5 seconds to reset it -- though you need to re-run strobelight-setup.exe again to reinitialize it. I used CRU in addition to Strobelight -- you can run "reset-all.exe" with ToastyX to restore all the original factory refresh rates (getting 60Hz back)

If you buy a new monitor, I highly recommend ULMB, which is easy to turn on/off in the menus. Any monitor with >250nit ULMB is recommended, to keep the bright and saturated colors, while strobing.

Borderlands ran fine for me at full 120fps framerate, capping out 95% fo the time. Your GPU is powerful for Borderlands, you can easily do max-everything and probably also include 4XAA on top of it too -- so no need to reduce refresh rate for Borderlands specifically.

[MordecaiW]

I got it figured out. I feel like such a dummy because I've encountered this issue before, but the issue was Nvidia's DSR. I use DSR in borderlands to get rid of the crazy amount of jaggies that are absolutely magnified by the stylized black border line around everything.

When using DSR in some games, it will only allow 60hz for some strange reason, *unless* you first set your desktop to the DSR resolution/refresh rate before starting the game. I use DSR 4x in the game, as it performs far better than forcing 4x AA through the Nvidia Control Panel, and does a much better job of eliminating the jaggies as well. The game looks frigging beautiful now, with full clarity in motion and minimal alaising. It's crazy how well it runs/looks/feels now.

With either DSR or 4xAA forced though, the game would drop under 120fps, so I settled on 100hz v-sync lightboost with the fps capped to 2 below the refresh.

Final settings that I found to make borderlands look as good as possible:

-All in-game settings maxxed out besides DOF which is turned off for better visibility.
-Edit the game's ini files to turn the framerate smoothing to MAX 98 for the fps cap 2 below refresh, enable vsync, increase FOV, set mouse sensitivity, and remove mouse smoothing. The in-game config options are very lacking in this game and it takes a good amount of editing to get things right!
-Nvidia DSR @ 4x with 0% smoothing, giving an effective 4k with an even multiplier on resolution for best effect in DSR
-ToastyX Lightboost set at 100hz on my 120hz monitor, better GPU could easily do 120 though.
-Set desktop to 3840x2160 @100hz lighboost before launching game or will cap to 60hz if DSR is enabled

Silky smooth now and glad to be enjoying the game like this for my first playthrough!

Sorry to bother you guys about this, but I saw Chief's quote when searching for whether people were able to run the game at above 60hz when I had this issue, not even thinking about DSR possibly causing the problem.

@RealNC: solid advice there too, the game definitely caps at 62 out of the box for no apparent reason. That was one of the first things I did.