The release of Borderlands 3 is scheduled for September 13th, a little over a fortnight away, and now is clearly an opportune time for 2K Games to reveal minimum and recommended system specifications for the upcoming installment in the popular franchise. With modest minimums and far from taxing recommended specs., Borderlands 3 should be a title that the vast majority of PC gamers can enjoy from a purely technical standpoint.
We'd love to see a Sea of Thieves-esq breakdown of performance expectations, but all 2K offer are two tiers corresponding to the minimum and recommended specs: '1080p Gaming' and '1440p Gaming'. They aren't exactly a lot to go on (hopefully they represent at least 60fps at those resolutions), but they're a hell of a lot better than nothing. Anyway, to the meat of the matter.
While being a little more graphically taxing that is usual, the minimum specifications shouldn't be too onerous for modern gaming systems. Overall the requirements are for a system that would be deemed 'high performance' approx. 6 years ago, but would now be matched by a mainstream 'gaming' system. AMD's Radeon RX 570 and NVIDIA's GTX 1050 should be enough to match the expected experience at 1080p when paired with most recent quad-core CPUs from Intel or AMD.
Recommended specifications push on quite a bit higher, but don't quite reach enthusiast-level hardware. With the exception of matching a Radeon RX 590 with NVIDIA's GTX 1060 (we assume the 6GB variant), a card we expect to perform more on par with the RX 580, nothing is out of the ordinary.
One potential niggle that could trip up the unwary is the broad requirement for 75GB of storage space for installation. Those using mechanical storage will be unfazed, but a cramped SSD being used for game installations may need a bit of tidying to accommodate Borderlands 3's sizeable footprint.
2K have also taken the time to break down details of Basic and Advanced configuration settings available for tweaking in-game performance. These include choice of API (DX11 or 12), Frame Rate limits, FoV (first-person and vehicle), and anti-aliasing tools.
As an AMD Optimised title, Borderlands 3 incorporates a number of technologies tailored to AMD graphics and CPU architectures. These include:
Asynchronous Compute – A GPU multithreading capability that allows for better GPU utilisation by executing more tasks simultaneously. This feature is present on some older AMD Radeon hardware, but robust support was notably lacking in NVIDIA's GTX 900-series 'Maxwell' GPUs.
AMD FidelityFX – A new technology suite, the most discussed aspect of which is a dynamic sharpening filter that boosts draw detail in low contrast areas with a low impact on frame rates. Only FXAA and TAA anti-aliasing options are available in-game as standard, and FidelityFX sharpening should go some way towards countering the smoothing effect these implementations exhibit.
AMD Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR Technology – FreeSync is AMD's implementation of the VESA Adaptive Sync standard that allows for tear-free frames and fluid frame rates on over 700 supported monitor models. FreeSync 2 HDR builds on it by by enabling darker blacks and brighter whites without oversaturation or clipping on supported HDR monitors.
Multithreading of Command Buffers – The Borderlands 3 game engine has been optimised for greater CPU multi-threading support, a strength of AMD's Zen and Zen 2 CPU architecture.
AMD FidelityFX – A new technology suite, the most discussed aspect of which is a dynamic sharpening filter that boosts draw detail in low contrast areas with a low impact on frame rates. Only FXAA and TAA anti-aliasing options are available in-game as standard, and FidelityFX sharpening should go some way towards countering the smoothing effect these implementations exhibit.
AMD Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR Technology – FreeSync is AMD's implementation of the VESA Adaptive Sync standard that allows for tear-free frames and fluid frame rates on over 700 supported monitor models. FreeSync 2 HDR builds on it by by enabling darker blacks and brighter whites without oversaturation or clipping on supported HDR monitors.
Multithreading of Command Buffers – The Borderlands 3 game engine has been optimised for greater CPU multi-threading support, a strength of AMD's Zen and Zen 2 CPU architecture.
Borderlands 3 launches on September 13th and is available as a timed exclusive on the Epic Games Store.
SOURCE: Borderlands 3 PC Specs
