Bloodborne PC Emulation Can Now Exceed 4K at 60FPS - And It's Brilliant - Digital Foundry
Bloodborne still lacks an official remaster and remains capped at a shaky 1080p/30 on consoles. Thanks to the rapidly improving ShadPS4 emulator, PC players can now push FromSoftware’s classic well beyond that—up to 4K at a near-locked 60fps on high-end hardware—with optional graphics mods that meaningfully modernize the look. Here’s what delivers the best results.
What makes 4K60 possible now
- ShadPS4’s recent updates dramatically boost Bloodborne performance and stability.
- On an i9‑13900K paired with an RTX 4080, 4K60 is now viable for long sessions with only minor visual quirks.
- Lower-end GPUs can scale to 1440p or 1080p and achieve similar smoothness.
Essential emulator settings (per‑game)
- Enable FIFO v-sync and async logging to smooth frame delivery.
- Increase DRAM allocation by +6000MB and set v-blank frequency to 9999Hz to prevent texture streaming glitches and distortion.
- In the Cheats and Patches menu, enable: tasksplit, increased graphics heap sizes, and (for affected CPUs) the Intel 12 + SFX patch.
- Adjust pixel resolution, target or unlocked frame-rate, and LOD, and consider disabling chromatic aberration and motion blur for cleaner visuals.
Stutter control with shader caching (v0.13.0)
- Without shader caching, first-time actions (entering new areas, first hits, first blood vial) can trigger 120ms+ frame-time spikes.
- Enabling shader caching greatly reduces follow-up stutters, though some compilation hiccups remain because there’s no pre-launch shader build step.
Real-world performance and limits
- 4K60 held steady about 99% of the time on RTX 4080-class hardware, with occasional minor foliage jitter or rare texture flicker.
- Physics, cloth, destruction, lighting, textures, and enemy AI match PS4; improved geometry LODs reduce pop-in at no obvious performance cost.
- CPU usage scales hard above 60fps. At the Yharnam bonfire stress scene, performance hits ~80fps at 4K, ~100fps at 1440p, and ~110fps at 1080p on the test rig.
- Known quirk: Above 120fps, a bug can make the run button behave like a slow slide. Cap the frame-rate at 120fps to avoid this.
Troubleshooting: Vertex Explosion Fix
- If visual glitches persist, the Vertex Explosion Fix mod (NexusMods) can stabilize high-res play. Trade-off: facial customization is disabled.
Optional remaster-style mod: Shadows of the Hunt (15GB)
- By modder fromsoftserve (formerly Bloodborne Remaster Project).
- Replaces baked lighting with dynamic shadow casting (sun and point lights). Minor shadow flicker can occur but visuals are significantly enhanced.
- Adds tweaked parallax occlusion for deeper surfaces, refined PBR values for more convincing materials, a Reshade profile with TAA over FXAA, MXAO over SSAO, and updated color grading.
- Performance impact: Heavy. On the 4080 test system, 4K drops to ~45–65fps; 1440p approaches but doesn’t always lock at 60fps.
Bottom line
If you’ve been waiting for a cleaner, sharper, and smoother Bloodborne, ShadPS4 now delivers the best path: 4K at 60fps on capable PCs, sensible caps to dodge edge-case bugs, and tasteful mods that bring a remaster-like sheen. Continued emulator work also bodes well for other PS4 exclusives without PS5 patches, like The Last Guardian and The Order: 1886.