The Coalition has officially completed development on Gears of War: E-Day, with the title reaching “gold” status on September 17, 2026. The milestone confirms the game is on track for its scheduled release on October 6, 2026. Alongside the gold announcement, the final PC specifications reveal that the high-resolution 4K experience is more accessible than initially anticipated for a modern Unreal Engine 5 project.

To achieve 4K resolution at 60 FPS on the “Ultra” preset, the game requires an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti or an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT. This target suggests a focus on technical optimization, as it allows players with mid-to-high tier 50-series hardware to reach the 60 FPS threshold rather than mandating a top-of-the-line flagship GPU like the RTX 5090.

Hardware-Accelerated Ray Tracing and Requirements

The technical foundation of Gears of War: E-Day is built around hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Unlike some titles that offer a software fallback, hardware-level RT is a mandatory requirement for this release; GPUs without dedicated ray-tracing support will be unable to run the game. This strict requirement is tied to the game’s implementation of “MegaLights” and hardware-based Lumen for lighting and reflections.

While the “Ultra” spec targets a stable 60 FPS, internal beta testing has identified a “Ludicrous” graphics mode for extreme hardware. Benchmarks from these tests indicate that even flagship hardware like the RTX 5090 can struggle to maintain native 4K in this specific mode, making the “Ultra” optimization more significant for the majority of the enthusiast player base.

CPU and Storage Specifications

The “Ultra” tier for PC also demands high-performance processing, listing the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D or the Intel Core i7-14700K as the recommended CPUs. To manage the high-fidelity assets characteristic of the franchise, the game requires 115 GB of available SSD storage.

To help maintain performance across various hardware configurations, Gears of War: E-Day will support several upscaling technologies at launch, including NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS 3.0.

Console Performance and Launch Timeline

Optimization efforts have extended to the Xbox ecosystem as well. Both the Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S are confirmed to feature 60 FPS performance modes. The inclusion of a 60 FPS target on the Series S is a notable detail given the hardware demands of Unreal Engine 5’s advanced lighting features.

Players who have purchased the Premium Edition can begin Early Access on October 1, 2026. For all players, pre-installs are scheduled to open on September 29, 2026, at 8 AM PT, ahead of the general release on October 6.