It's meant for people who play Borderlands 2 on super low-end PCs and/or laptops that don't meet the game's minimum requirements.


This guide was written from a Core i3 2,54 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Intel HD 3000 and Win7 Professional 64 bit standpoint. I cannot guarantee that weaker machines will run Borderlands 2 at an acceptable framerate, or that GPUs other than Intels will accept screen resolutions mentioned below.


Back up your WillowEngine.ini. I will NOT take responsiblity if you mess up and your game becomes unplayable.


Don't suddenly jump into a 4-player coop after completing this guide! Your machine won't handle that, especially if you're the one hosting. Playing with one friend is probalby all you can manage.


This guide is quite long. You might want to get something to eat or drink.

Borderlands 2 is visually beatiful in its own way, there's no question about that. However, this prettiness comes at a price. A high price. No, I'm not talking about money, I'm talking about framerate.

BL2 has a lot of visual bells 'n whistles. The famous black outline around everything, high-res cartoony textures, depth of field, bloom, light shafts, nice dynamic shadows, lovely particle effects, ragdolls flying all over the place - you name it. It makes the game look amazing, no doubt - but on older machines it also means that you'll be playing with 10 frames per second (fps). Which is not good, considering 25-30 is the bare acceptable minimum for an FPS (First Person Shooter) of this kind. Let's be frank, BL2 is a rather slow game and 30 fps is more than enough to play it comfortably. If we were talking about, say, Quake Live or TF2, a 60 woud've been a must. But here? Nah. 30 is fine.

This guide will disable everything mentioned above and more. Sure, it will make your game look like it was taken straight from the 90s, but it also will make it playable. That's assuming you follow the rules.

Here's an example of what you can expect in-game:


If the image above doesn't put you off, read on. If it does, well, too bad for you.

Before we start, go to your Steam library, find Borderlands 2, right-click on it, select properties, navigate to the "General" tab, click "Set launch options" and type the following:


This will disable the splash screen that pops up every time you launch the game. Why did I tell you to get rid of it? Simple - it has a nasty habit of completely resetting your video options, which is not something you'd want to see after having followed this guide.



Got it? Good. Now launch your game, and while experiencing the joy of your options never being reset again, go to video options menu and set everything aside from FoV (Field of View) and Textures to the lowest possible value. That means:

UI Sway - off.

VSync - off - it will hurt you more than it will help you. Mouse lag is not really something you want in an fps, even a slow one like this.

Framerate - Unlimited. On your machine, any sort of fps cap (this includes framerate smoothing) will cause stuttering and/or screen tearing.

Anisotropic Filtering - off, it's a huge performance killer.

Bullet Decals - off. You wouldn't be able to see them anyway.

Foliage Distance - near. This means the game has to render less stuff at any given time, which increases the framerate.

Texture Quality - whatever you prefer, I left it at low, because setting it to high is like sprinkling a turd with some sugar. It's still a turd, but with some sugar sprinkled on it.

Game Detail - low. This affects the overall quality and unless you're playing on a monster (and you obviously aren't since you're reading this) this will cause your game to lag.

Ambient Occlusion - distorts the screen when you're hit by, say, acid and adds some lightning effects. Setting it to Off not only increases framerate but also ensures your view will not be obscured by eyecandy stuff.

Depth of Field - things nearby are sharp, things far away are blurry. It's supposed to stimulate eye accomodation. Turn it off for a framerate boost and better visibility.

FXAA - off. On low resolutions it's absolutely pointless.

View Distance - low. You don't need (and can't) see that far.

PhysX Effects - unless running an NVidya card - low.

Texture Fade - off.

Colourblind Mode - off.

Well, here are the absolute basics. Step 2 covers the... less basic of basics.

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Now we're getting to the core of the guide. From this point on you will be editing essential game configuration files, so please,
The file in question is WIllowEngine.ini. It's usually located under

You can open it with the default Windows Notepad, but I wouldn't recommend it. Instead, install Notepad++[notepad-plus-plus.org]. It's superior in every conceivable way.

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First things first - little is known about the fact that resolution you play the game in is one of the biggest performance killers. Think about it - simply changing from 1366x768 to 1280x720 means that your machine has to render more than 127 thousand pixels less at any given time. And if you change it even further, to say 1024 x 576, it means nearly half a MILLION less pixels you have to worry about.

But we're going to have to go lower than that, I'm afraid. Even 1024 x 576 is too much to handle for low-end laptops, so here's two resolutions that retain the oh-so-important 16:9 aspect ratio, while being smaller than 1024x576:

768x432

762x428 - I discovered this little gem recently. For some reason, it makes the game run much smoother.

896x504

If you're running a 16:10 screen, you might use these instead:

640x400 - <- this is probably the best pick, as it has both width lower than 768/704 and height lower than 480, while still being a 16:10 resolution

704x480

896x560

Using 16:10 resolutions on a 16:9 screen isn't necessarily the worst idea ever - in fullscreen the image might be stretched, but just a little bit - it's barely noticeable, like running a 4:3 resolution on a 5:4 monitor. Circles might appear a bit oval, but that's about it.


Wonder why 640x360 isn't here? That's because BL2 doesn't support resolutions with less than 640 width or less than 400 height. That's right, the lowest resolution Borderlands 2 can handle is 640x400, which is a 16:10.

Problem is, by default those cannot be selected unless you add them manually via software provided by your GPU manufacturer.

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I own an Intel GPU, therefore I have no idea whether it's possible to add custom resolutions on NVidia and AMD graphics cards.

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To add a custom resolution, go to your desktop, r-click on an empty space and select "Screen resolution",



In the next window, click "advanced".



Then, navigate to the tab with a monitor icon on it and click the wide button below. Don't mind the silly marks, I've set my system locale to Japanese, which causes stuff like this to happen. It says "Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel", so be on the lookout for this.



It should point you directly to Display Settings. Under these, a "Custom resolutions" section is located. Click it, ignore the warning and you should see this, albeit in your system language:



To add a custom resolution:
1. Select the Display which should run the new resolution.
2. Select Basic Settings. You don't want to mess with Advanced ones.
3. Enter width.
4. Enter height.
5. Enter refresh rate. For most screens it's 60 Hz. If you're not sure, check your display's refresh rate before entering it.
6. Enter color depth - 32b. Setting this to 16 or 8 will make it painful to look at the game.
7. Underscan Percentage - keep it at 0. This is meant for when the image goes outside the monitor's boundaries.
8. Click add, confirm and OK, enjoy your new, super-low resolution.

If the game doesn't have the newly added resolution listed, you can force it to launch in a specific resolution. Open up WillowEngine.ini, and Ctrl+f search for lines:

ResX means width, ResY means height. Replace whatever it's set to with the resolution you want and save.

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Borderlands is widely known for having a black outline around every object. It is also known that, while pretty, this shader eats up a large chunk of memory and processing power and thus causes framerate drops. It's possible to remove it and make the game look less cartoony and run much smoother.

Open WillowEngine.ini again and Ctrl+F search for the following line:


and change it to:


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Now the real fun begins. Navigate to the [SystemSettings] section of WillowEngine.ini, search for and then set the following to FALSE:


Setting dynamic shadows to false provides a huge framerate boost, but the snow will blind you during daytime. Literally.




Setting dynamic lights to false will cause items in inventory and loading screens to appear almost completely black.

I figured some of these might require an explanation, so here you go.

bUseMaxQualityMode - BL2 sometimes sets this to true, even if the machine clearly can't handle it.

StaticDecals - removes stuff like marks on walls etc.

DynamicDecals - removes textures added on top of other textures in real time, like bullet holes, footprints etc.

DynamicLights - some objects generate light that's independent from the whole scene and moves along with the object. Setting this to false disables that.

DynamicShadows - that's one major performance killer; setting this to false entirely removes shadows and massively boosts framerate, but has some unlpeasant consequences in the form of snow blindness.

LightEnvironmentShadows - some areas have different lightning than the others. Setting this to off makes everything appear as if it were in broad daylight, even inside caves.

CompositeDynamicLights - a less memory-intensive version of Dynamic Lights, but a performance killer nonetheless.

MotionBlur - an absolutely disgusting and unncecessary effect, it blurs the image if you travel at high speed or turn around quickly. Set it to false.

DepthOfField - meant to simulate eye accomodation. Objects in focus will stay sharp, objects out of focus will become blurry. Setting this to false causes the image to look more crisp.

AmbientOcclusion - kind of difficult to explain, but according to Wikipedia, ambient occlusion is used to represent how exposed each point in a scene is to ambient lighting. So, basically, another shadow-related performance killer. Set it to false.

Bloom - supposed to simulate fringes of light extending from the borders of bright areas in an image. Nicely looking, fps draining. Set it to false.

bAllowLightShafts - this is supposed to simulate crepuscular rays, or rays of sunlight that appear to radiate from the point in the sky where the sun is located. If you're looking at the sun and there's something partially blocking your vision, crepscular rays will appear. Set this to false for an fps boost.

Distortion - distorts the screen, ie. when something explodes. Needless to say it lowers your framerate.

SpeedTreeLeaves - turns off leaves on trees, increases fps and visibility, as there's no foliage to obscur your vision.

SpeedTreeFronds does the same thing as above, except with grass.

OnlyStreamInTextures - if set to true, this will cause any texture that hasn't been rendered in the last 5 minutes to fully load in at highest resolution, which uses a humongous amount of video memory.

LensFlares - meant to simulate light getting in your eyes when you look directly at the sun without anything blocking your view. Set to false.

FogVolumes - disables fog.

AllowImageReflections - disables reflections.

AllowImageReflectionShadowing - disables reflection shadowing (duh).

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High-poly characters and high resolution particles look nice, but cause framerate drops, especially the latter - you'll notice that during intensive firefights BL2 slowly turns into a slideshow, to the point where it becomes nearly unplayable. Don't worry, there's a way around this.

Open up WillowEngine.ini (again) and find these lines:

Those will have some numbers assigned to it.

SkeletalMeshLODBias determines the quality of in-game character models. -1 is the highest quality, while 10 is the lowest.
ParticleLODBias - controls the quality of particles, with -1 being the highest and 10 being the lowest.
DetailMode - overall quality of the game. By default set to 2, the other settings are 1 and 0.

Default, high-poly models:

The same models with SkeletalMeshLodBias set 10:


You probably noticed that I screencapped the same guy in the exact same spot. Why? Low quality models are only loaded if characters don't talk or don't have any facial animations. No need to worry, though - as soon as they stop talking the models return to normal.

Warning: major NPCs (Jack, the original four Vault Hunters, Tannis, current Vault Hunters, Torgue etc.) and items (guns, shields, class mods etc.) do NOT have low-poly versions of their models, so they will stay in high quality regardless of what you do.

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We've disabled the vast majority of shadows, but some are still present. Why not just not disable them as well, then? The answer is simple - some shadows are essential, and disabling them will make your eyes bleed. I once went too far with tweaking and it turned my game into a disco party, where everything was flashing and changing colours at random. Also the game's colour palette looked like it was taken from an IBM PC.

Anyway, open WillowEngine.ini and search for these lines:

The above settings will have some values assigned to them. I modified these such a long time ago, I forgot what the original values were like - 512, 1024, 2048? Anyway, it was a power of 2. Set these to whatever you want, as long as it's not a negative number and a power of 2 - so 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 etc. I set them to as low as 4 and 8.

You might also want to search for
and set it to 0.

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This might seem a bit complicated, but really isn't. In WillowEngine.ini, find

And you should be redirected to a group of long, scary-looking lines of code. No need to worry, though.

What you're seeing are values responsible for the quality of in-game textures.

Each line of code contains an almost identical part in brackets -

Your task is to assign a lower value to MaxLODSize. A much, much lower value. Again - not a negative number and must be power of 2, like 256. It will lower the quality of in-game textures and make them look blurry, but hey. We went this far, why not make the game even more hideous than it already is?

Here's a 640x400 screenshot with MaxLODSize set to 256:



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Ragdolls are fine and dandy and it's awesome to see bodies of your enemies fly around when you smash them into pieces, but there is one downside.

Yeah, you guessed it. It kills your framerate. By default (if I remember correctly) BL2 allows ragdolls to stay in the world for 500 or 600 seconds after their creation, after that they disappear.

500 seconds is a gosh-darn long amount of time, considering how quickly you can kill enemies in this game - and the more ragdolls appear on your screen at any given time, the more your framerate is going to suffer.

Any way around it? Yep. This time we will be editing a different file, called WillowGame.ini. It's located in the same directory as WillowEngine, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding it.

Once opened, search for the following section:


Below you'll find settings responsible for ragdoll behaviour:


SecondsBeforeConsideringRagdollRemoval - this settings determines how many seconds have to pass before the game considers removing a ragdoll after it's been created. By default it's set to 500 or 600. I set it to 10, so I can still see my enemies flying around, but their bodies don't linger around for too long.

SecondsBeforeVisibleRagdollRemoval - this one determines how many seconds have to pass before the game actually removes the ragdoll. Also set to 10.

SecondsBetweenRagdollRemovalAttempts - the lower value, the more frequently ragdolls will disappear. If set to 0, one removal attempt will remove all existing ragdolls.

SecondsBeforePhysicsShutsDown - determines how long ragdolls stay "active", ie. shooting them causes them to move. By default set to 64, which is way too long - when a ragdoll is active, your machine has to perform additional calculations to properly simulate its behaviour and movement. When a ragdoll becomes inactive, it stops moving and no longer reacts to stimuli such as explosions or gunfire. I set it to 5.

Why not just disable them altogether? Well, there's two reasons, and one of them is pretty important.

Firstly, it affects your experience. Seeing your enemies simply vanish into thin air after obliterating them with a rocket launcher is not a fun thing to do, same with incineration, electrocution etc.

Secondly, it makes one particular quest impossible to finish - Cult Following: Eternal Flame. This quest relies on ragdolls - after you kill a bandit with a fire weapon, he will play his "death by flame' animation, fall to the ground, and his ragdoll will turn into ash. Disabling ragdolls prevents this from happening and you won't be able to collect the ashes.

This isn't even the worst part - if you decide to abandon this quest, Lilith will pop up in your ECHO and remind you to switch to a fire weapon every time you kill someone - doesn't matter if he's not a member of the Bloodshots or if you're in an entirely different area. She will even haunt you in DLCs and while being held hostage by Handsome Jack - so do yourself a favor and don't disable ragdolls.





The settings responsible for particles are located just below ragdoll settings.


Those are the default settings. I suggest setting SecondsBeforeConsideringRemoval to 1 and SecondsBetweenRemovalAttempts to 0.25.

We've covered everything that could be done with the game itself - however, there are several additional ways of increasing your framerate.


This might seem like an obvious thing to do, but still. You have a weak machine, and having a browser, music player or an IM running in the background will do you no good - shut them down.

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WARNING: Do NOT, under any circumstances give "Real time" priority to a process by yourself. Real time is meant for system critical processes, and as much as I like BL2, it is by no means a critical process.

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