{"id":1322402,"date":"2026-04-27T04:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T04:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kQ5wBBC9C9Mc3Kd9x7XVgE"},"modified":"2026-04-27T04:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T04:24:13","slug":"when-it-comes-to-borderlands-4-and-its-8-cores-or-equivalent-requirement-its-actually-core-quality-not-core-count-that-matters-the-most","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/when-it-comes-to-borderlands-4-and-its-8-cores-or-equivalent-requirement-its-actually-core-quality-not-core-count-that-matters-the-most\/","title":{"rendered":"When it comes to Borderlands 4 and its ‘8 cores or equivalent’ requirement, it’s actually core quality, not core count, that matters the most"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In case you didn’t know, because you’ve been living on Pluto these past few days, Borderlands 4 has launched. It’s not exactly been smooth sailing for 2K Games and Gearbox Software, the publishers and developers, as the game’s overall performance is rougher than the Drake Passage.<\/p>\n

To help matters (or make things worse, depending on your point of view), 2K produced a detailed chart of what settings Nvidia GPU owners should use<\/a> to get the best performance. However, most of this just involved enabling upscaling and<\/em> frame generation. Borderlands 4 is just plain hard<\/em> on your hardware.<\/p>\n

Especially the CPU, it would seem, because the minimum system requirements<\/a> demand an ‘8 core (or equivalent)’ processor, citing an Intel Core i7 9700 as an example. Yesterday, I tested a very similar chip<\/a>, the 9700K, in a rig with a Radeon RX 5700 XT and 1080p Low quality, and the CPU was frequently hitting 100% utilisation in the open world (see below).<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But what if your gaming PC has a processor with fewer cores, a Core i5 or a Ryzen 5 chip, for example? Does that mean you’re going to be in trouble? To find out, I’ve spent the day running a series of tests on two gaming PCs, where I’ve decreased the number of cores and\/or threads active in the BIOS.<\/p>\n

Starting with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K<\/a>, with 48 GB of Corsair DDR5-8400<\/a> and a GeForce RTX 5080<\/a>, I ran Borderlands 4 at 1080p with DLSS Performance enabled to minimise the impact of the GPU on the results. However, I did enable the Badass quality preset to ensure that the CPU was pushed as hard as possible.<\/p>\n