I don't know where else to ask this, but you're a helpful and hardware savvy bunch, so here goes:

I'm considering getting Borderlands on PC to play with a friend of mine, but my PC ain't all that great. I want to know what I can expect from a P4 2.8 GHz CPU. My GPU is a Radeon HD4650 and should be able to run the game in Medium at the very least. I've got 2 gigs of system memory, so that isn't an issue. I'm just worried about the CPU. Now, my performance tolerance threshold is rather high in that I can tolerate FPS as low as 25-30. Can I expect at least that or should I just skip this game and consider something else? He brought up an interest to play Left 4 Dead as well (either game, maybe both), so an estimation on performance for those would be nice too.

Honestly, I'm expecting some pretty negative answers, and I will not be surprised. Games that I can run decently include the original FEAR on max settings with minor drops during large firefights, Call of Duty 4 near max (pretty much everything highest except Shadows) with some drops to 20-30 during the heavier missions, and Team Fortress 2 runs smooth as butter with all the bells and whistles. That's about the most I can push my system.

Here are the system requirements for Borderlands:

Intel Processor - Pentium 4 2.4GHz
AMD Processor - Athlon XP 2400+
Nvidia Graphics Card - GeForce 8600 GS
ATI Graphics Card - Radeon X850 Series
RAM (Memory) - 2 GB
Hard Disk Space - 8 GB
Direct X - 9

http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=439&game=Borderlands website says that if you log in you can compare your hardware to those requirements

Thanks, I'm starting to get a rough idea of how I'll perform, which will probably be around 15-25 average FPS with an untweaked game. However, some research has indicated that there are numerous ways to tweak performance through the game's config files and such, so I should be able to squeeze through with a solid framerate and good eye candy like with Oblivion.

Edit: The results I got for Borderlands are uplifting, as well. +11% over the minimum CPU, yet it strangely displays -1% on the GPU, despite somebody from another forum claiming to have easily maxed the game on an HD4650. Granted, these results are far from 100% accurate.

Left 4 Dead got horrid marks, with an abominable -153% weaker CPU than what it wants, but an even stranger reading with the GPU at -22%, yet Borderlands is obviously more GPU intensive than L4D, unless L4D is some Source engine anomaly. :laugh:

Overall, I'm satisfied. I'm more interested in playing a loot-intense RPG/FPS open world coop game than a fast paced survival game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkZKYGQPjRc video should be able to give you an idea. Seems fine to me.

Edit- Taking into consideration the ~10 FPS hit from Fraps as well.

Whoa, that's..surprising. Thanks a ton for linking this! His specs are almost identical to mine and show a tolerable performance in the game while preserving eye candy (I could improve it even further assuming this guy has not done extensive config tweaks). Damn, I gotta get this now.

It's funny - I wouldn't have thought of Borderlands as being intensive at all.

I mean, think about it: cartoony graphics (less detail), fewer things on screen at once. If you play it single-player, you're the ONLY thing on the screen other than the wild dog-things you're fighting.

Left 4 Dead has more "realistic" graphics, lots of detail, and hundreds of NPCs on screen at any one time.

Well, I figured it was since while L4D does have a more realistic style, there are a lot more screen filters, distortion effects, particles and such in Borderlands, whereas L4D's extremely high CPU requirement makes sense because of the number of AI bots present at one time.

Borderlands does give the illusion that it isn't GPU intensive due to its cell shaded visual style, but I've read reports of delayed texture pop-in regardless, and in actuality, a cell shaded game is likely to have more fancy graphical effects to sort of counterbalance the appearance of low resolution textures, though they are in fact quite a high resolution. It's..complicated, and I don't quite understand exactly how cell shading works, just that I'm going to assume a higher GPU load than CPU whenever I see it. :shrug:

Edit: To give an example, take the original Farcry. It contained visual render modes ranging from Cold to Paradise, and even had a Cartoon style, which was basically cell shading (Whether or not it was true cell shading, I have no idea. Maybe there's a way to simulate cell shading without actually applying it. Again, my knowledge is limited). The textures looked lower res than in Doom 1, yet the aesthetic style of the game was still appealing, and, more importantly, the game was just as demanding as it was with the realistic style.