Vault Hunters, you’re almost there – the big day is tomorrow, when we unleash the mayhem of Borderlands 3 on PC via the Epic Games Store.
So, what do you need to know so that you’re completely prepared?
1) Lilith Returns for a New Trailer! PC system requirements for Borderlands 4 have been published by Gearbox, and they are a tick higher than the previous mainline release. Here’s what the specs tell us about performance, what they suggest about settings and how to get your hardware ready for the chaos.
PC Minimum and Recommended Specifications
The minimums aim for modern 1080p play with reasonable tradeoffs: Windows 10 (64-bit), an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X or Intel Core i7-9700, 16GB of RAM, an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT or Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, and 100GB of free space on an SSD.
Recommended requirements add the following extra horsepower for higher settings or resolutions: Windows 11 (64-bit), AMD Ryzen 7 5800X or Intel Core i7-12700, 16 GB of RAM, AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT or Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, and also 100GB storage on a SSD drive.
What All Those Parts Really Mean
From things that connect to your motherboard, the RX 5700 XT and RTX 2070 are upper-midrange cards that are a generation behind, and are also generally fine for 1080p with medium-to-high settings. Plan for these to be your benchmark in the event that you’re okay to turn down weighty effects. The RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 put you comfortably in the 1440p zone, and with some overhead for better shadows, volumetrics and draw distance. VRAM also comes into play — low-end cards tend to have 8GB, while recommended GPUs usually have 10 to 16GB, which also helps with high-resolution textures and makes streaming more stable.
CPU guidance is notable. A minimum of a Ryzen 7 2700X or Core i7-9700 cries a game that plans to rely upon multiple threads during big combat encounters. The fact it also recommends a bump to a Ryzen 7 5800X or Core i7-12700 also is a good reminder that a faster single-core boost with more efficient scheduling in such dense firefights, physics, and AI routines can also have a big impact on playability. If you’re running on an older quad-core, you may find that you get some frame-time spikes even if your average FPS isn’t terrible.
Storage, OS, and Memory considerations
The SSD requirement isn’t just window dressing. Open world shooters are tasked with texture packs, traversal streaming, and loose asset swaps; an SSD reduces hitching, shaves seconds off load times. You will want to maintain at least 100GB of free space to avoid fragmenting the drive and cabbage elvis to the controller. The RAM requirement is 16GB, at least, a practical floor for a big modern PC release with large open zones and nifty effects galore.
Minimum specification supports Windows 10, with a recommended move to Windows 11. That’s frequently groundwork for new scheduling features and driver models benefiting hybrid CPUs and modern GPUs. If you’re already running Windows 11, you’ll also want to ensure its most recent feature update and GPU drivers have been installed before proceeding.
Settings Tuning: easy wins for your FPS
If you’re near the bottom end of that GPU scale, trim volumetric fog, shadows and screen-space reflections first—they’re usually the settings that’ll yield tangible FPS gains while the visual impact is relatively minor. Reducing crowd-density and foliage can also deliver a more consistent frame time in high-intensity firefights. Texture quality is limited by VRAM; keep it a tick below “Ultra” on 8GB cards to avoid pop-in or stutter. Field of view is definitely personal choice, but wider FOVs come with a performance cost, just knocking it down a little can make large scenes feel a bit more comfortable.
Borderlands games have always been so hardware scalable. But shooting for a frame-rate cap that your system can actually make will force a consistent gameplay experience (for a lot of rigs, that target is 60FPS with adaptive sync rather than erratic spikes and troughs instead). As usual, download the latest Game Ready or Adrenalin driver—Nvidia and AMD both promise double-digit performance increases for newly released games, on average, in their driver changelogs.
Controls, Deck Status & Day-One Patch
On the PC side, the game is built for both mouse-and-keyboard and gamepad play, which suits a game built around snap-aim firefights and loot management. Gearbox has warned of a significant day-one update which is geared towards PC performance – so grab that before you go buttering your bread, as post-patch things can shift around to alter the best settings formula. It doesn’t list official Steam Deck support at this time. Laptop gamers, you might have to tinker with Proton settings and extreme performance setting if you want to give it a try.
Upgrade Paths If You’re Below Spec
Behind the curve on graphics? At 1080p, cards such as the Radeon RX 6600 or GeForce RTX 3060 often exceed the listed minimum, and they can relatively affordable used or on sale. CPU-bound? The switch from an older quad-core CPU to something like a Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-12400 can in and of itself result in dramatically improved frame pacing on an identical GPU. And if you’re still on spinning storage, moving the game to an SATA or NVMe SSD is the single largest “upgrade” you can make to reduce stutter and load times.
The upshot: if you hit these requirements, we can infer you have a fast, scalable shooter on your hands and that it rewards balanced rigs, say solid multi-core CPUs alongside GPUs armed with at least 8GB of VRAM, as well as an SSD.
Now with drivers ready, a day-one patch for the game, and a couple of intelligent settings tweaks, I suspect the majority of midrange gaming PCs are prepared to crack the next vault without spontaneously melting into bricks.
Sources: Gearbox Software and 2K Games system requirement disclosures; vendor driver notes from Nvidia and AMD discussing performance optimizations for new PC releases.