Borderlands 4 Tested on RTX 5090 — Even High-End Rigs Struggle

It looks like Gearbox Software still has some homework to do when it comes to optimizing Borderlands 4. Even owners of powerful PCs are unable to achieve stable FPS and are running into crashes.

YouTuber Compusemble tested the game on top-tier hardware — an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 paired with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and 64 GB of RAM. To get a full picture of the game’s graphical capabilities, he ran it with several different settings. In native 4K resolution, the game averaged 55 FPS, while at 1440p and 1080p, he managed 88 FPS and 110 FPS, respectively.

PC Gamer journalist Nick Evanson reported running into the same problem. Using an RTX 5090 and Ryzen 9 9950X3D at max settings, he noted frame rates dropping to 40 FPS indoors, frequent desktop crashes, and poor draw distance.

Meanwhile, Gearbox has already responded to the wave of player complaints about optimization. To help mitigate the issue for now, the developers released an extensive graphics settings guide for each preset. High-quality images and the full guide can be found at this link.

Borderlands 4 is already available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5, with the Nintendo Switch 2 version launching on October 3. Earlier, the looter-shooter received a flood of negative reviews on Steam, with early benchmarks across various GPUs showing that optimization leaves much to be desired.