The launch of Borderlands 4 has brought renewed attention to PC optimization challenges, as analysts at Digital Foundry have shared concerns over the game’s technical performance. Despite running on Unreal Engine 5, the looter shooter is encountering issues with shader compilation, demanding system requirements, and cutscene frame rate inconsistencies.
Digital Foundry’s Alex, who tested the PC version, found that the main issue is shader stuttering. The game does a two-and-a-half-minute pre-compilation before launching, but it still misses some necessary shaders. This causes stutters during common gameplay actions, such as shooting a new enemy, seeing a death animation, or using a unique grenade. Alex noted that frame times became very inconsistent, even during a cutscene with Clap Trap, where CPU usage spiked to 99 percent. These problems were observed on a high-end Ryzen 79800 X3D CPU, suggesting that processors like the mid-range Ryzen 5 5600 would likely experience even more significant performance issues.
When running the game on an RTX 5090 at 4K with DLSS4 in performance mode, Borderlands 4 produced frame rates between 70 and 90 FPS at its highest “badass” settings. While visually impressive in places, Alex observed that the game’s demands are unusually steep, comparable to graphically intensive path-traced titles. He recommended lowering certain settings, as the highest configurations often result in minimal visual improvements compared to their heavy performance costs.
The implementation of Unreal Engine 5 features has also been inconsistent. Lumen global illumination enhances some environments, but its realism occasionally clashes with the cel-shaded art style that defines Borderlands. Vegetation, which appears to rely on Nanite, demonstrates a distracting pop-in effect where animations suddenly activate as the player approaches. Meanwhile, all real-time cutscenes are capped at 30 FPS, interrupting the otherwise variable frame rate gameplay with jarring slowdowns.
While Alex noted improvements in gun animations, he remarked that the core combat remains largely unchanged from earlier entries, relying heavily on depleting enemy health bars rather than offering more tactile or reactive gunplay. Unlike Borderlands 2, which featured destructible physics-driven environments, Borderlands 4’s world is described as static and lacking interactive elements.
The issues extend beyond PC. John from Digital Foundry highlighted that even on PlayStation 5, the game can dip into the 30 FPS range during heavy open-world combat. Steam user reviews currently reflect these frustrations, rating the game as “mostly negative,” with many players arguing that its visuals fail to justify the high hardware demands.
Borderlands 4, developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K, released on September 12, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is scheduled for October 3, 2025, though it remains to be seen whether optimization improvements will arrive before then.
