Update | Gearbox CEO warns players ahead of launch: Borderlands 4 may be 'unplayable' on below-spec hardware

Nvidia has since published benchmarks on-site that indicate that its flagship RTX 5090 can push as much as 300 frames per second when leveraging DLSS4 with Multi Frame Generation and DLSS Super Resolution enabled.

Original article continues as follows:

Borderlands 4 is gearing up for its launch later this week on September 12, 2025, on the PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch 2 port slated for October 3. However, Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford has cautioned PC gamers hoping to play the game on older hardware.

Randy Pitchford addressed concerns about the game’s performance on X during a preview, where the game seemed to be suffering from performance issues, which were later attributed to a faulty power supply on the reviewer's end.

Still, the discussion continued with some users talking about the minimum specs and occasional lag, to which Randy Pitchford responded: 

“The Day 1 patch does a lot! That said, the expectation for using a below-min-spec machine should be that the game is unplayable. That the game runs at all on your system is a miracle. That you can get 55-60 fps out of heavy combat is actually incredible, given how the engine and what’s going on under the hood. 

Your specification doesn’t indicate if you’re on SSD or HDD, but that could explain some of the hitching. It’s a big, bold, new seamless world, and I’m sorry to say that older hardware may not provide buttery smooth performance for the latest gen AAA games, as has always been the case since the dawn of gaming.”

Borderlands 4’s open-world map of Kairos, with tons of Vaults and side quests, and end-game content, has garnered hype for the game’s release. However, many PC gamers have tempered their expectations given the game’s demanding system requirements, which set a substantial bar of entry into a cel-shaded title built on Unreal Engine 5.

The title’s base requirements are significantly beefier as-is versus most of its peers: Borderlands 4 requires an Intel Core i7-9700 or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, 16 GB RAM, RTX 2070 or Radeon RX 5700 XT, and 100 GB of SSD space. The game’s recommended specs step up the ante with an Intel Core i7-12700 or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, 32GB RAM, and an RTX 3080 or a Radeon RX 6800 XT.

The CPU requirements of the game, and Steam hardware surveys between May and August, suggest that a significant chunk of the platform’s users would need to upgrade their CPUs to meet the minimum requirements.