Borderlands 4 Performance Benchmark @ TechPowerUp
TechPowerUp reviewed Borderlands 4, highlighting how it evolves the series with its first truly open-world design on the planet Kairos. The game offers varied regions, side quests, and new traversal tools like grappling hooks, gliders, double jumps, dashes, and swimming, which make exploration more fluid and combat feel tighter and more responsive. It keeps the series’ trademark humor and over-the-top loot system while introducing a fresh cast of Vault Hunters. While the main storyline remains mostly linear, side quests stand out for their engaging writing and dark humor. The game is built on Unreal Engine 5, delivering the best visuals in the series to date, with richer geometry, lighting, and textures while retaining the signature cel-shaded style. However, cutscenes are capped at 30 FPS, which makes them feel stuttery, and some texture pop-in still occurs.
Borderlands 4 brings major improvements to gameplay, gunplay, character progression, and finally delivers a true open-world experience. Hardware requirements are steep, though. In our performance review, we examine its graphical fidelity, VRAM usage, and how well it runs on a variety of modern GPUs.
Performance-wise, the game is very demanding. Achieving 60 FPS at 1080p on max settings requires a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti or better, with 1440p needing a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, and even those GPUs struggle at 4K. Upscaling is well implemented, with support for NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS, alongside frame generation, though each GPU brand is locked to its own frame-gen tech. VRAM usage is high, hitting about 14 GB at 4K max settings, which puts 8 GB cards at a disadvantage. Still, using upscaling, frame generation, and lowering from “Badass” to “High” or “Medium” settings can greatly improve performance while preserving visual quality. Despite its heavy hardware requirements and $70 price tag, the game delivers a highly addictive looter-shooter experience, with responsive controls, impressive visuals, and over 40 hours of content for those who dial in the right settings.
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