Gears of War: E-Day now has official PC system requirements, and the headline takeaway is simple. The Coalition has drawn the minimum line at ray-tracing-capable GPUs, which leaves Nvidia’s GTX 10-series and 16-series cards off the supported list. The game arrives on PC and Xbox on October 6, with Premium Edition buyers getting five days of Advanced Access.
Quick answer: To run E-Day at minimum, you need at least an RTX 2060, RTX 5050, RX 6600, RX 9060, or Intel Arc A580, paired with 12GB of RAM and a 130GB SSD. GTX cards like the 1060, 1070, 1080, 1080 Ti, and 1660 are not on the supported list.
Gears of War: E-Day PC system requirements
The Coalition and Xbox Game Studios published the full specs through the game’s official Steam page. The numbers are reasonable for a modern Unreal Engine 5 title, with the main sticking points being the GPU floor and the storage demand. DirectX 12 is required for both tiers.
| Component | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit (19045.7291) | Windows 11 64-bit (25H2) or newer |
| CPU | Ryzen 5 2600X / Intel i7-6850K / i5-10400 | Ryzen 5 5600 / Intel i5-11600K |
| RAM | 12 GB | 16 GB |
| GPU | RTX 2060 / RTX 5050 / RX 6600 / RX 9060 / Arc A580 | RTX 3060 Ti / RTX 5060 / RX 6700 XT / RX 9060 XT / Arc B580 |
| DirectX | Version 12 | Version 12 |
| Storage | 130 GB SSD | 130 GB SSD |
Why GTX 10-series cards miss the cut
The minimum and recommended GPUs are all DirectX 12 Ultimate cards. That points to E-Day using baseline DX12U features such as hardware ray tracing, variable rate shading, mesh shaders, and sampler feedback. GTX models like the 1060, 1070, 1080, 1080 Ti, and 1660 lack hardware-level ray tracing, which is why they fall outside the supported hardware.
Some of those cards may still boot the game at low settings, but you can expect performance and compatibility problems because of the missing ray tracing support. The minimum GPU also needs at least 6GB of video memory. If you are running a GTX card today, this is the upgrade signal.
The 130GB SSD requirement
Storage is the other point worth noting. E-Day asks for 130GB of free space, and that number stays the same whether you target minimum or recommended settings. A solid-state drive is required, not just suggested, so a mechanical hard drive will not meet the spec.
Note: Plan that space ahead of launch. With an SSD listed as mandatory across both tiers, clearing room on a slower drive will not satisfy the requirement.
CPU and RAM targets
The processor demands are modest. The minimum tier accepts older six-core chips like the Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel Core i7-6850K, or Core i5-10400, with 12GB of RAM. For the recommended experience, you want a Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-11600K alongside 16GB of RAM. Compared with the GPU and storage requirements, these are easy to hit on most recent builds.
PC features in E-Day
Built from the ground up on Unreal Engine 5, E-Day is the most graphically advanced Gears game yet. The PC version supports uncapped frame rates, ultrawide monitors, keyboard and mouse remapping, and multiple display modes. On the visual side, it adds HDR10 plus hardware ray-traced lighting, reflections, and shadows.
One detail the specs do not cover is the target resolution, settings preset, or frame rate each tier is meant to hit. The Coalition has not attached those numbers yet, so treat the published requirements as a hardware floor rather than a promise of a specific performance level. More granular guidance typically lands closer to release, which gives you time to line up a DX12U GPU and the SSD space before October 6.
