Gears of War: E-Day PC Specs: Ray Tracing GPU Required

Planning to play Gears of War: E-Day on PC? You might need to check your graphics card first, because this one won't even boot without ray tracing hardware.

The Coalition just dropped the official PC specs ahead of the game's October 6 launch, and there's one big catch: GPUs without dedicated ray tracing support are simply not supported. That means massively popular cards like the GTX 1060 and AMD's RX 5000 series are out. The absolute minimum you'll need is an RTX 2060. It's a hard generational lock, similar to what we saw with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but it's still going to sting for a lot of players.

On the bright side, the RAM situation is surprisingly reasonable. No matter which graphics preset you choose, you'll only need 16GB of RAM. That's welcome news given how expensive memory has been lately. You will need an SSD, though, and 115GB of free space for the install.

Here's how the specs break down. For 1080p at 60fps on Medium settings, you're looking at something like an RTX 2060, an entry-level RTX 5050, or an AMD Radeon RX 6600 with 6GB of VRAM. Moving up to 1440p at 60fps on High bumps you to 8GB of VRAM, with cards like the RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT. And for 4K at 60fps on Ultra, you'll need a 12GB card like the RTX 5070 Ti or RX 7900 XT.

Across all presets, you can take advantage of upscaling tech like Nvidia DLSS 4.5, AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS 3.0T to lighten the load. The Coalition also says there's a built-in benchmark tool to help you fine-tune performance on your rig. The studio has been iterating on PC stability and performance since July, so hopefully that work pays off at launch.

Gears of War: E-Day hits Xbox Series X|S and PC on October 6, and it'll be available day one on Xbox Game Pass. The game chronicles the first disastrous encounter between humanity on Sera and the Locust. The developers recently chatted with GameSpot about lore challenges, the new take on Horde mode, and even a Smash Mouth-inspired achievement for the all-stars out there.

So, does your current GPU make the cut, or is it finally time for an upgrade? Let us know in the comments!