Borderlands 4has had an interesting marketing cycle, with therelease date being movedand Gearbox head Randy Pitchford saying that real fans would spend $80 on it,even though the game was later revealed to cost $70.
The game’s release on the recently released Nintendo Switch 2 may make you think that Borderlands 4’s system requirements are a non-factor for most modern gaming PCs, but they’re heftier than you might expect. As highlighted byOdd-Onion-6776in a recent Reddit thread, Borderlands 4’s minimum requirements exclude half of all Steam users.
This data comes courtesy of Steam’sregular hardware survey. Participation in the survey is optional, and Steam doesn’t release the exact number of participants, but you’d imagine a platform as prolific and popular as Steam would easily reach the minimum number of participants for the survey to be viable.
Borderlands 4 Requires 8 Core Processors Or Better
According to the survey, 50.2 per cent of Steam users have CPUs with 6 or fewer cores. The minimum requirements to play Borderlands 4 include a CPU equal to or better than the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X or Intel Core i7-9700 Processor, both of which are 8-core CPUs.
The minimum requirements allow the player to play Borderlands 4 at 60 frames per second, in 1080P resolution.
Not meeting the minimum requirements doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t get Borderlands 4 working, but performance issues are likely if you play the game with a build below the requirements. My new-ish GPU dragged my dying CPU across the finish line for several years, so someone’s build could compensate in other areas, depending on their hardware.
Still, players are surprised by how demanding Borderlands 4 is, especially since the series has always eschewed photorealism in favour of stylised visuals. The heavier CPU requirements may be a result of the addition of seamless transitions to Borderlands 4, i.e. there won’t be loading screens between open-world zones, possibly increasing the stress on the CPU.
This also raises the question of how Gearbox is getting the game to work on the Switch 2, which is a more powerful console than usual for Nintendo, but still doesn’t compete with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. There is speculation that the Switch 2 version will be downgraded in some way, but that’s just conjecture until the game releases.
Borderlands 4 releases July 28, 2025, for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC.
