Borderlands 4 - Only 33% of PC gamers meet the requirements to play with recommended settings

2K and Gearbox have detailed the launch plans for the upcoming Borderlands 4. Although attention is being placed on the game's lack of an $80 price tag (turns out the game will launch for $70), PC gamers will probably want to take a closer look at the game's minimum and recommended hardware requirements.

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When it comes to PC specs, the 'recommended' settings are the ones that you should pay the closest attention to, as they refer to running the game at a high resolution with visuals on par with or better than console, and at a decent frame rate. Borderlands 4's recommended specs are causing a bit of a stir in the PC gaming community because it's a triple sting of asking for a high-end CPU, GPU, and RAM.

On the CPU front, Gearbox says the game requires 8+ CPU Cores for the best performance, listing the Intel Core i7-12700 and AMD Ryzen 7 5800X as a baseline. On the GPU front, Gearbox says the game requires a GPU with 12+ GB of VRAM, listing the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT as the baseline.

Yes, most RTX 3080s out in the wild only feature 10GB of VRAM, so you're probably looking at a GeForce RTX 4070 at a minimum to meet Borderlands 4's recommended specs. It doesn't stop there, as Gearbox suggests that you play on a PC with 32GB of RAM or system memory.

Based on these CPU and RAM requirements, only 33% of PC gamers can play Borderlands 4 with the recommended settings, according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey results. And that's not counting the GPU requirement.

The minimum requirements are more lenient on the GPU side, with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT required; however, the 8 CPU Core requirement still stands. On Reddit, gamers are blaming the latest Unreal Engine tech for the high system requirements while pointing out that the visuals in Borderlands 4 don't look that much better than the last Borderlands-verse game, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands from 2022.

The recommended GPU on that release was the GeForce RTX 1060, which has been upgraded to RTX 3080, an 8+ Core CPU, and 32GB of RAM for Borderlands 4.

Borderlands 4 PC hardware requirements

Minimum

• OS: Windows 10 / Windows 11
• Processor: Intel Core i7-9700 / AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 / AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
• Storage: 100 GB available space
• Additional Notes: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system. Requires 8 CPU Cores for processor. Requires 8 GB VRAM for graphics. SSD storage required

Recommended

• OS: Windows 10 / Windows 11
• Processor: Intel Core i7-12700 / AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
• Memory: 32 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
• Storage: 100 GB available space
• Additional Notes: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system. Requires 8+ CPU Cores for processor. Requires 12+ GB VRAM for graphics. SSD storage required