· Mick
Gears of War: E-Day PC: ray tracing required and final system requirements
Gears of War: E-Day launches October 6 with three final PC configurations. The minimum looks approachable, but it has two important limits: a hardware ray-tracing GPU is mandatory, and every performance target lists an upscaling technology.
Analysis of The Coalition and Xbox documentation. GPUStores has not played or benchmarked the game.
The Coalition published these requirements September 17 and calls them final for launch. Premium Edition early access starts October 1 at 15:00 UTC; worldwide release and PC Game Pass availability follow October 6 at the same time. Pre-install begins September 29.
The three configurations, without mixing targets
Minimum · 1080p Medium, 60 FPS
GPU: RTX 5050 or RTX 2060; Radeon RX 6600 or RX 9060
CPU: Ryzen 5 2600X; Core i7-6850K or i5-10400
Memory: 6GB VRAM, 12GB RAM
Recommended · 1440p High, 60+ FPS
GPU: RTX 5060 or RTX 3060 Ti; RX 6700 XT or RX 9060 XT
CPU: Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-11600K
Memory: 8GB VRAM, 16GB RAM
Ultra · 4K Ultra, 60+ FPS
GPU: RTX 5070 Ti or Radeon RX 7900 XT
CPU: Ryzen 7 7800X3D or Core i7-14700K
Memory: 12GB VRAM, 16GB RAM
All three tiers require 115GB on an SSD. These are alternative options across vendors and generations, not a ranking that says every card on one line performs identically in every game.
Ray tracing is a compatibility gate, not just an Ultra setting
The note under the official chart requires dedicated hardware ray tracing and says cards without it are unsupported. A GTX 1080 Ti may have enough memory for parts of the table on paper, but it does not meet that requirement. More RAM or a lower resolution cannot add a missing hardware feature.
Xbox lists ray-traced reflections, shadows and global illumination. The RTX 2060 and RX 6600 minimum shows that the game is not limited to recent high-end cards: hardware RT support and the intended performance tier are separate questions.
The 60 FPS targets include upscaling
Every target lists DLSS, FSR, TSR or XeSS. The advertised PC features specifically include DLSS 4.5, FSR 4 and XeSS 3.0. Xbox does not identify the technology or quality mode used for each card in this chart. “4K 60+” should not be read as a native-4K promise for the RTX 5070 Ti or RX 7900 XT.
The game is set to include a built-in benchmark and advanced PC settings. That will be the useful tool for checking your own machine after release. Our DLSS 4.5 tracker also explains why one upscaling label does not produce the same image at every output resolution.
What this changes before buying a part
For 1080p Medium, 6GB of VRAM is an official floor, not a general recommendation for a new purchase. The 1440p tier already moves to 8GB and 4K Ultra to 12GB. If you are choosing a card for several upcoming games, use our VRAM capacity guide instead of turning one game’s minimum into a universal rule.
The jump from Ryzen 5 5600 to 7800X3D between Recommended and Ultra shows that The Coalition also raises the CPU target. The chart does not separate campaign, multiplayer or ray-tracing CPU load. Before upgrading, use the benchmark and monitor GPU, CPU and VRAM separately; our CPU-or-GPU upgrade guide helps avoid buying from one requirements line alone.