Gears of War: E-Day PC System Requirements: Min to 4K

The official PC requirements for Gears of War: E-Day are unusually demanding at the bottom end — every GPU tier, including minimum, requires hardware ray tracing, and an HDD simply won't do. Below are the verified store-page specs, what each tier actually targets, and the platform extras (handhelds, upscalers, cloud) if your rig falls short. The console-versus-PC picture lives in our platforms guide.

What are the minimum PC requirements for E-Day?

The minimum tier targets 1080p/60 at Medium settings with upscaling:

A hardware ray-tracing-capable GPU is mandatory — the RTX and RDNA cards listed above all clear that bar, and nothing below them does. DirectX 12 and a broadband connection round out the floor, and a Microsoft account is required on Steam.

What are the recommended and 4K specs?

The Ultra row is deliberately thin: the GPU line (RTX 5070 Ti / RX 7900 XT) is what the store page confirms for 4K/60 with upscaling, and full CPU/RAM rows for that tier haven't been published — 16 GB and a modern 6-to-8-core CPU is the sensible reading of the trajectory, not an official number.

Why every tier requires a ray-tracing GPU

E-Day is built on Unreal Engine 5 with Nanite, always-on Lumen, MegaLights, and RTX Mega Geometry — the rendering pipeline assumes RT hardware rather than offering a rasterized fallback. That's why there's no GTX-class option at any tier. It's also a CPU-heavy engine, which is why the minimum CPU list jumps to six-core parts. If your PC can't clear the floor, both cloud routes — Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce NOW — stream the full game without local hardware demands.

Storage, handhelds, and other PC details

• SSD is non-negotiable. Both tiers require 115 GB on an SSD; HDDs are unsupported. The download itself has been reported around 120 GB via the Xbox app, and pre-load went live September 29 — the timeline is in our release date guide. A modular installer can deselect Campaign, Horde Siege, or Versus to reclaim space.
• Upscaling across the board: DLSS 4.5 (with frame generation), FSR, XeSS, and TSR are all supported.
• Display and input: ultrawide, HDR10, full controller support (the Steam listing also calls out DualSense), and keyboard-and-mouse as standard.
• Handhelds: the store page describes E-Day as optimized for Steam Deck and Xbox Ally — though a formal Steam Deck Verified badge was not confirmed at launch.
• Game Pass: day one on PC Game Pass, which is the cheapest way to play if your hardware is borderline and you'd rather test before buying — the tier differences are in our editions breakdown, and the Premium Upgrade path is covered in our early access guide.