Gearbox has confirmed it really was serious about those beefy Borderlands 4 system requirements that went live on the game's Steam page months ago. While some older hardware is supported here, the recommendations are still pretty mighty, and with Randy Pitchford's recent warnings about the game's performance you might, indeed, want to keep your expectations in check.
In a new blog post, Gearbox reiterates its previously announced specs, but now promises that the minimum loadout can offer "solid performance on older PC hardware."
The hardware in question here is an Intel Core i7-9700 or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and 16GB of RAM.
Those are, technically, older pieces of hardware, but they're still fairly meaty and much closer to the recommended specs for most modern games. Another key missing detail is what "solid performance" means. Is that 60 FPS at 1440p? 30 FPS at 1080p? Better? Worse? Somewhere in between? Your guess is as good as mine.
There isn't a huge gap between the minimum and recommended specs, either. The higher end will give you "the intended experience for Borderlands 4, striking a solid balance of smooth performance and graphical detail." Again, there aren't any details on what that means, but to achieve it you'll need an Intel Core i7-12700 or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and 32GB of RAM.
With Pitchford actively warning "everyone to have realistic expectations for performance" ahead of the Borderlands 4 release times, I think it's fair to guess you won't be able to run this game on a potato. Exactly how well it runs on machines that meet the recommended spec, however, remains to be seen, and we won't have the answer to that question until later this week.
If you want details on the Borderlands 4 classes as you start considering your build ahead of launch, you know where to click.
