Gears of War: E-Day PC System Requirements
Gears of War: E-Day arrives October 6, 2026, and its PC requirements are now official on Steam. The headline detail: it needs a GPU with hardware ray tracing, so some cards that were fine for years are now ruled out.
Official system requirements
All three columns come from official sources: Xbox's launch PC specification chart (Xbox Wire, September 17, 2026) and the Steam store page, which match on hardware, RAM and storage. Ultra appears only in the Xbox chart. The game is also listed on the official Xbox page.
| Component | Minimum | Recommended | Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Graphics preset | Medium | High | Ultra |
| Target | 1080p, 60 FPS | 1440p, 60+ FPS | 4K, 60+ FPS |
| Upscaling | DLSS / FSR / TSR / XeSS listed at every tier | ||
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit (22H2) | Windows 11 64-bit (25H2 or newer) | Not listed |
| CPU | Ryzen 5 2600X / Core i7-6850K / Core i5-10400 | Ryzen 5 5600 / Core i5-11600K | Ryzen 7 7800X3D / Core i7-14700K |
| GPU | RTX 5050 / RTX 2060 / RX 6600 / RX 9060 | RTX 5060 / RTX 3060 Ti / RX 6700 XT / RX 9060 XT | RTX 5070 Ti / RX 7900 XT |
| VRAM | 6 GB | 8 GB | 12 GB |
| RAM | 12 GB | 16 GB | 16 GB |
| Storage | 115 GB, SSD required | 115 GB, SSD required | 115 GB, SSD required |
| DirectX | Version 12, with a hardware ray tracing capable GPU (Steam) | ||
Two entries are printed as the publisher wrote them and are not selectable in our checker: the Core i7-6850K (we found no gaming benchmark to place it on our scale) and the plain "Radeon RX 9060" (no matching product or benchmark found; the RX 9060 XT is). Neither changes the Minimum score, which is set by the weakest selectable card and CPU on each list.
Want a verdict for your own PC instead of reading a table? Use the PC checker tool.
The ray tracing rule is the real gatekeeper
Steam is explicit: a hardware ray tracing capable GPU is required. That is a hard cutoff, not a performance suggestion. Every GeForce GTX card, including the 10 and 16 series, is out, as is anything AMD made before the RX 6000 series, including the RX 590 and RX 5700 XT. An older card can look fast on a benchmark chart and still not launch the game, which is why our checker treats those cards as below minimum however they score on raw power.
The weakest cards on the Minimum list are the RTX 2060 (6GB) and RX 6600 (8GB). If you own one of those, you meet the floor, but the same list also names the RTX 5050, so Microsoft is treating a 2019 card and a 2025 card as equivalent for the 1080p Medium target.
Storage, RAM and everything else
The install is 115GB and it has to be on an SSD. RAM is generous at the bottom: 12GB minimum, 16GB recommended, so a single 8GB stick setup is the one place a cheap upgrade matters. The Recommended tier also lists Windows 11, worth checking if you are still on Windows 10.
The official chart lists these PC features: NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, AMD FSR 4 and Intel XeSS 3.0t; hardware ray-traced reflections, shadows and global illumination; a built-in benchmark mode with advanced PC settings; and HDR and ultrawide monitor support. Every tier's performance target lists DLSS / FSR / TSR / XeSS, so treat the frame-rate targets as upscaled results, not native. Source: Xbox Wire.
Recommended-tier upgrades
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Graphics Card
An RTX 5060 or RX 9060 XT sits on the official Recommended list and has the ray tracing hardware the game requires.
Processor
A Ryzen 5 5600 is the official Recommended-tier CPU, and one of the cheapest ways to meet it.
1TB NVMe SSD
The 115GB install must live on an SSD, and a 1TB drive leaves room for other games.
Not sure what you need? Run the GameReady Checker first, it flags your specific bottleneck.
Release timeline
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| September 29, 2026 | Pre-load opens |
| October 1, 2026 | Premium Edition early access begins |
| October 6, 2026 | Standard launch |
The game also launches on Xbox Series X|S. If your PC misses the ray tracing rule, that is the cheaper way in than a GPU swap, see our console guide.