The Coalition says Gears of War: E-Day has gone gold, and with that came the final PC requirements. The most interesting part is not the graphics cards but the footnote under the table: a card without dedicated hardware ray tracing is not supported, so a GTX 1060 or an RX 580 is out of the conversation entirely. One number moved our way, though. The install size dropped from 130 GB to 115 GB.
The official table: three tiers instead of two
Back in June the Steam page listed only Minimum and Recommended, with no resolution and no preset attached. Now the studio spells it out: every tier carries a resolution, a frame rate target, a preset and a VRAM figure, and 4K gets a third column called Ultra that did not exist before.
| Item | Minimum | Recommended | Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preset | Medium | High | Ultra |
| Target | 1080p, 60 fps | 1440p, 60+ fps | 4K, 60+ fps |
| Upscaling | DLSS, FSR, TSR or XeSS | DLSS, FSR, TSR or XeSS | DLSS, FSR, TSR or XeSS |
| GPU | GeForce RTX 5050, RTX 2060, Radeon RX 6600 or RX 9060 | GeForce RTX 5060, RTX 3060 Ti, Radeon RX 6700 XT or RX 9060 XT | GeForce RTX 5070 Ti or Radeon RX 7900 XT |
| CPU | Ryzen 5 2600X, Core i7-6850K or i5-10400 | Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-11600K | Ryzen 7 7800X3D or Core i7-14700K |
| VRAM | 6 GB | 8 GB | 12 GB |
| RAM | 12 GB | 16 GB | 16 GB |
| Storage | 115 GB, SSD only | 115 GB, SSD only | 115 GB, SSD only |
The Steam listing adds the operating system separately: Windows 10 64-bit build 19045.7291 at minimum, Windows 11 version 25H2 or newer as the recommendation. DirectX 12 and a broadband connection apply to every tier.
Upscaling is on everywhere, and they say so
Not a single row promises native rendering. 1080p60 on an RTX 5050, 1440p on an RTX 5060 and 4K on an RTX 5070 Ti all come with DLSS, FSR, TSR or XeSS running, and the studio does not say which quality mode. The gap between Quality and Performance can be worth ten frames or more, so read the numbers as guidance rather than a promise.
- Versions. DLSS 4.5, FSR 4 and XeSS 3.0 are listed, plus the engine's own TSR.
- Ray tracing. Hardware reflections, shadows and global illumination, with no opt-out mentioned.
- Benchmark. A built-in benchmark mode alongside advanced PC settings.
- Displays. HDR and ultrawide monitor support are part of the official feature list.
If your card sits outside that upscaler list, our breakdown of what DLSS does today and who actually gets it is the place to start, and swapping the upscaler by hand is covered in our OptiScaler Client guide.
No hardware ray tracing, no game
The footnote under the official table leaves little room: an SSD is required, a ray-tracing capable graphics card is required, and cards without dedicated hardware ray tracing support are not supported. In practice the floor is an RTX 2060 on the NVIDIA side and an RX 6600 on the AMD side, and anything older never made the list.
One more detail, spotted by TechSpot: the Arc A580 and Arc B580 are gone from the final list, though they were there in June. XeSS 3.0 is still named among the game's features, so Intel owners are probably fine and it is the specific models that were dropped.
Dates: pre-install 29 September, launch 6 October
Pre-install opens on 29 September at 15:00 UTC on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC and Steam. Premium Edition owners get in five days early, on 1 October at 15:00 UTC. The wide release is 6 October, also at 15:00 UTC, and the game lands in Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass on the same day. The Steam pre-purchase is $69.99.
Studio head Mike Crump used the announcement to thank the people who played July's multiplayer beta, saying the team spent the rest of the summer on PC stability and performance because of it. We get to check that in two weeks, and the built-in benchmark will come in handy.
Sources
The requirements table, the PC feature list and the ray tracing footnote: The Coalition's announcement on Xbox Wire from 17 September 2026, which also carries Mike Crump's words and the pre-install, early access and release dates. Operating system, DirectX, network lines and the price: the Gears of War: E-Day Steam page as of 18 September 2026.
The comparison with the June listing, the drop from 130 GB to 115 GB and the missing Arc A580 and B580: TechSpot, 18 September 2026.
