Every once in a while, a videogame comes along with bold system requirements that prove exclusionary to a large portion of the market. For example, titles in recent years like Doom: The Dark Ages as well as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle mandate ray tracing. Borderlands 4 is yet another instance of a release demanding higher specifications from players but in doing so it’s excluding over 50% of Steam’s userbase.
Gearbox Software shared the Borderlands 4 system requirements on the game’s Steam store page. The specifications don’t appear egregiously demanding at a glance, with components including RTX 2070 and Core i9-9700 setting the floor. However, within the ‘additional notes’ section is an explicit demand: ‘Requires 8 CPU Cores for processor.’
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 64-bit Windows 11 |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Intel Core i7-9700 | AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Intel Core i7-12700 |
| RAM | 16GB | 32GB |
| GPU | AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 | AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 |
| Storage | 100GB SSD | 100GB SSD |
| Notes | Requires 8 CPU cores. Requires 8GB VRAM. | Requires 8+ CPU cores. Requires 12GB+ VRAM. |
The developer doesn’t provide any specific reasoning for this core count requirement. To make an educated guess, I expect it’s to streamline optimisation across platforms, as both PlayStation 5 and both Xbox Series consoles sport eight Zen 2 cores. I expect the game will at least run on hexacore processors like Ryzen 5 9600X but it may turn in subpar performance.
This could have a dramatic effect on the reception to Borderlands 4, as most Steam users are using processors with fewer than eight cores. Referring to the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey (May 2025), 50.22% of potential players don’t meet this requirement. The majority share of 29.79% have six cores at their disposal, but the next largest portion (24.37%) do meet the threshold with eight exactly.
I’m curious to see how Borderlands 4 performs on Intel processors with hybrid architectures. Will CPUs including Core i5-13400F, with six performance cores and four efficient cores, make the cut or not? Such are the questions that arise from Gearbox’s lack of clear communication.
The FPS launches on September 12, so there’s plenty of time to provide clarification but not much to save up for a potential processor upgrade. Perhaps modders will find workarounds if necessary but that’s just wishful thinking at this point in time.
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