“Some need to learn how their PCs work” — Borderlands 4 head fires back as optimal settings for 68 GPUs released

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Borderlands 4, the newest installment in the popular Borderlands series, came out on September 11, 2025. However, after less than a week, it has a “Mixed” rating on Steam based on over 16,500 reviews. The main reason for the negative feedback is poor performance on PC.

The game developer recently published detailed guides to help PC players optimize performance on NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards (as reported by Videocardz). These guides cover 68 different GPUs and provide the best settings for playing at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. They offer recommendations for NVIDIA cards ranging from the RTX 2070 up to the RTX 5090, and AMD cards from the RX 5700 XT to the RX 9070 XT.

If you don’t have a graphics card as powerful as an RTX 3060 Ti or better, you’ll likely get around 30 frames per second (FPS) at 1080p resolution. To play at 1440p and maintain 30 FPS, you’ll need at least an RTX 3070 Ti. If you’re aiming for 4K gaming, an RTX 3090 Ti or higher is recommended to achieve 60 FPS.

Borderlands 4’s poor PC performance doesn’t sit well with gamers

My RTX 5070 Ti graphics card is categorized for 4K gaming, but to get a smooth 60+ frames per second, I have to use NVIDIA’s DLSS 4 with its most aggressive settings. This means enabling Multi Frame Generation at its maximum 4x level and lowering the texture quality to Medium, along with several other visual details reduced to their lowest settings.

To get a smooth experience with over 60 frames per second at 1440p resolution, I’ll still need to use DLSS performance mode. However, I can increase some of the visual settings a little. I’m probably going to hold off on playing for now, hoping they release some updates to improve performance.

Even though it was known for months before release that Borderlands 4 would require powerful computers – with estimates suggesting over half of Steam players might need to upgrade their hardware – many players are criticizing the game due to its poor performance.

Poor optimization and PC performance were topics of our Borderlands 4 review.

Even with a fairly powerful setup – an NVIDIA RTX 3080 graphics card and AMD Ryzen 9 5900X processor – our reviewer had significant performance problems while playing the game, and these issues didn’t fully disappear even after a software update.

The game ran incredibly poorly – honestly, the worst performance I’ve ever experienced. Even on the lowest graphics settings and using FSR upscaling, I couldn’t maintain a stable 60 frames per second, even with my powerful RX 6900 XT graphics card.

Steam user “Etiko”

Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford has been clear about what it will take to run Borderlands 4 smoothly. Because the game uses the demanding Unreal Engine 5, he says players may need to adjust settings or lower the resolution to ensure a stable experience.

In a response on X (formerly Twitter) to a player having trouble running the game on older computers, Randy Pitchford stated that Borderlands 4 is designed for players with high-end gaming setups.

We’ve released the minimum and recommended system requirements for the game. While many people have capable hardware – around the level of a four-year-old smartphone – Borderlands 4 is a high-end game designed for players with modern PCs. Just as it won’t run on a PlayStation 4, it shouldn’t be expected to run on older computer hardware. Details beyond September 13, 2025, are still to come.

Since the NVIDIA RTX 3060 and RTX 4060 remain the most popular graphics cards used by Steam players, many gamers are frustrated that a new, high-budget ($70) game can perform so badly on those cards.

Console players have been disappointed that the game doesn’t let them adjust the field of view (FOV) or turn motion blur on or off. Since these settings can often help prevent motion sickness, it reflects poorly on Gearbox.

If you’re getting Borderlands 4 at launch, I suggest trying to meet the graphics card requirements Gearbox has listed. Every bit of performance will help!

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2025-09-15 20:10