Gears of War: E-Day is Microsoft’s biggest fall release, and The Coalition just confirmed the PC specs ahead of the October 1 early access window for Premium Edition buyers. The headline detail here isn’t the RAM or storage, it’s the graphics requirement: this is one of the first mainstream shooters to make hardware ray tracing mandatory rather than optional. If your GPU can’t do ray tracing at all, the game simply won’t run, no matter how strong the rest of your rig is.
Minimum Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit (22H, build 19045.7291) or newer
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel Core i7-6850K / i5-10400
- Memory: 12 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 / RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 6600 / RX 9060 (ray tracing required)
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 115 GB, SSD required
Recommended Requirements
- OS: Windows 11 64-bit (25H2) or newer
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 or Intel Core i5-11600K
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 / RTX 3060 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT / RX 9060 XT
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 115 GB, SSD required
What to Expect at Each Tier
Minimum spec is built around an RTX 2060 or RX 6600, both several generations old at this point, so The Coalition is clearly trying to keep the door open for people who aren’t on the newest cards. Expect 1080p at 60fps with ray-traced shadows and reflections turned down as far as they’ll go. It should run, but Gears has always been a game about reading the battlefield fast, and lower settings will make some of that harder in crowded Horde Siege fights.
Recommended spec targets 1440p at a steady 60fps or higher, which lines up with an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT class card. That’s a realistic bar for most people building or upgrading a PC this year. DLSS 4.5, AMD’s newer FSR “Redstone,” and frame generation are all supported, so there’s real headroom to push resolution or frame rate beyond the base numbers if your card supports those features. The 115 GB storage figure and SSD requirement don’t change between tiers, so budget the drive space either way.
Release Date, Platforms and Price
Gears of War: E-Day launches October 6, 2026 on PC via Steam, alongside Xbox Series X/S and Xbox Game Pass. Premium Edition buyers get early access starting October 1, and the standard edition pre-loads on September 29. Standard price is $69.99, with the Premium Edition at $99.99. There’s no Mac or Linux support, and Windows 10 is the floor on OS, though Windows 11 is what The Coalition is actually recommending for the smoothest run.
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