After years of AAA games shipping with requirements that instantly excluded a huge chunk of the Steam hardware survey, Gears of War: E-Day is heading in a different direction — and it’s a welcome sight.
The Coalition and Xbox Game Studios published the official PC system requirements for Gears of War: E-Day this week, ahead of the game’s October 6, 2026 launch on PC and Xbox Series X|S. Minimum specifications ask for an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel Core i5-10400, 12GB of RAM, and a GPU equivalent to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Radeon RX 6600, or Intel Arc A580. Recommended specs step up to a Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-11600K, 16GB RAM, and an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT. Both configurations require Windows 10 22H2 or newer, DirectX 12, and 130GB of available SSD storage: that last point is mandatory; a spinning hard drive is not listed as an option. The game is built entirely on Unreal Engine 5, and it’s the first mainline Gears title built without reusing legacy assets or animations from prior games, which explains both the visual ambition and that 130GB footprint. The game also arrives on Game Pass Ultimate day one.
The RTX 3060 Ti has been one of the ten most popular GPUs in Valve’s Steam hardware survey for months, and the RTX 2060 is a card from 2019 that remains widely owned. The Coalition has targeted these tiers as minimum and recommended rather than requiring the latest generation suggests genuine effort to bring the game to the PC audience. The mandatory SSD requirement is the one demand that will catch older system builders by surprise, but they’ve been mandatory in our minds for a long time now (Ed: What do you mean, you aren’t using that 10k RPM Velociraptor anymore?). The UE5 adoption also brings Lumen and Nanite into the picture, and The Coalition specifically highlighted MegaLights, Epic’s new UE5 dynamic lighting system, as a headline visual feature that should deliver the darker, more atmospheric horror-tinged aesthetics Gears has been angling toward since Gears 5.
The notable footnote on the minimum GPU list: the RTX 5050 appears alongside the RTX 2060, which is a bit of an awkward pairing since those cards are from entirely different generations. Both meet the minimum bar for DirectX 12 Ultimate support, which the game requires meaning mesh shaders, variable rate shading, and DirectX Raytracing are all in play. Older non-DX12U cards may run the game, but don’t expect a smooth experience. Set your calendar reminder for October 6 to dive in.