Tearing and stuttering fix

Is your Borderlands affected with screen tearing or stuttering at 60 fps?
This guide describes how I managed to get rid of this irritating problem.

Introduction

Hi, this guide should help you to get rid of screen tearing and/or stuttering and give you smooth gameplay without any screen artifacts.
I'm not sure if it is driver issue or too powerfull PC for borderlands (I never thought that I would ever say this). I mean, if your PC makes lots of fps and you expirience unusual things, you will simply turn on VSync/limit fps and problem is solved. That is not the case with borderlands in my case with borderlands which is capped at 62 fps within config file by default.

Preparations

In order to fix this issue you will need notepad and D3D Overrider or RadeonPro (this one should also work fine even with nVidia cards). You can easily find both apps.
Now why we need one of these apps? Well, these two apps can force triple buffering in Direct3D games which is not possible from drivers (they can force it only for OpenGL)

First thing to do

Go to your Documents\my games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config\ folder and open WillowEngine.ini with notepad.
Use search (ctrl+F) and find bSmoothFrameRate.
Change this from bSmoothFrameRate=True ---> bSmoothFrameRate=False

Now, it only remains to tweak options with D3D Overrider or RadeonPro. You need only one of these. I will describe them both, and then choose which one you will use

D3D Overrider

Since this one is simplier, I will start with this one (and does not require installation). If you are familiar with RivaTuner, you will notice that it looks same. It was part of it but if you have new Afterburner, you wont find this program within your RivaTuner installdir. Also, in new RivaTuner that comes with Afterburner 3.0+ you still have fps limiter, but you can't force triple buffering.


As you can see, it's really simple.
Firstly, when you start this app, disable your global detection to avoid any incompatibility issues.

Then add (white cross on left bottom corner) your borderlands.exe and use high detection with both options on, like on screenshot.

Additionaly this app will give you sound signal when forcing is triggered which is fine option if this app is not on startup. You can disable sound signal if you click on speaker in right bottom corner.

RadeonPro

This app requires installation and it has much more features than D3DOverrider. Since this app is not made by AMD, I think that it should work with nVidia cards, but it is possible that some settings like auto overclocking on starting game wont work.

Just add borderlands.exe (first icon on top), click on it to be sure that profile is selected and switch to tab Tweaks on right side of the program. As you can on picture, put VSync on "Always on" and check Triple-buffering.
If you are not sure about refresh rate of your monitor (most likely 60), leave that field with 0 and check "Lock frame rate up to monitor's refresh rate". Either will work. Also, since we turned on VSync, fps should not go over monitor refresh rate anyway, but I like keeping things on a safe side with both options.

Additionally, this app supports video recording, benchmarking, screenshots, FPS counter and OSD (just like fraps and afterburner) and these can be somewhat configured in settings (third icon from left or you can access settings from tray icon). It also have sound notification that can be turned off just like in D3D Overrider. Even more, you can literally override every single possible settings, from visual to CPU core affinity and disabling Aero which makes this app really powerful.

Conclusion

Short version of guide would be: turn off game cap limitation and use app that supports forcing D3D VSync and triple-buffering.
I hope that this guide will help you, I'm sure that forcing triple buffering helped me.

You can find detailed explanation on VSync, double and triple buffering here[www.anandtech.com]
Also, these two apps can fix these issues in other games too (if options are not avaivable in game settings). It would be nice if Gearbox adds these options with steam multiplayer patch.

Enjoy in your smooth working game.

Additional notes

1. I kinda forgot about nvidia adaptive VSync (tnx to Baggie). If you have nVidia card, you can try that first.
2. RadeonPro can cause some apps that you have to crash. If you see that app crashed because of appprofiles.dll, you need to disable API monitoring for non listed programs in RadeonPro settings/advanced.

[Wingol]

Thanks, still works, getting steady 60FPS.

[Baggie]

I found putting on adaptive vsync through the nvidia control panel fixed the problem for me.