Gears of War: E-Day PC requirements: ray tracing is mandatory

Most PC requirement sheets are a sliding scale: if you're below the minimum, you drop settings and live with it. Gears of War: E-Day has a hard floor instead, and it's worth knowing which side of it you're on before you pre-install on 29 September. I've read the official specs so you don't have to squint at the spec image.

The official PC specs

That's from the spec image in Microsoft's Xbox Wire post, and it matches the Steam listing, which puts it bluntly on the minimum line: "Hardware Ray Tracing capable GPU is required." Steam also lists Windows 10 64-bit as the minimum OS and Windows 11 for recommended. Note that every tier assumes upscaling is on. The 60 FPS targets are Microsoft's, not native-resolution numbers.

Why GTX cards are out, in plain English

Ray tracing simulates how light bounces. Microsoft lists hardware ray-traced reflections, shadows and global illumination among the game's key PC features, and it has built the game assuming your card can do that work in dedicated hardware. NVIDIA explains the difference in its own write-up: GeForce RTX cards include "RT Cores - dedicated hardware designed to deliver the performance needed to run high-fidelity real-time ray traced experiences", while "on GeForce GTX hardware, these calculations are performed on the programmable shader cores." That's true of the GTX 16 series too, even though it shares a generation with the RTX 20 series.

NVIDIA did once enable basic DirectX ray tracing on GTX 1060 6 GB and up through a driver, running on those shader cores. Don't read that as a loophole. Microsoft's footnote says cards "without dedicated hardware ray-tracing support are not supported," and I wouldn't spend $69.99 hoping otherwise.

Find your card

• GeForce GTX 10 or 16 series (GTX 1060, 1070, 1080, 1650, 1660…): not supported. No RT cores.
• GeForce RTX 20 series: the RTX 2060 is on the minimum tier, so RTX 20 cards clear the hard floor. Match your card's VRAM against the table.
• GeForce RTX 30, 40 and 50 series: all have RT cores. Your tier comes down to VRAM and speed; the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 5060 are the recommended-tier names.
• Radeon: the RX 6600 is the minimum AMD card. AMD's own spec page lists 28 Ray Accelerators on it (source). If you're on an older Radeon, check your card's spec page for Ray Accelerators before you buy.
• Intel Arc: not named on the official chart, so I can't tell you where it lands. Wait for launch reports before you buy for it.

Our Can I run Gears of War: E-Day? checker does the VRAM part for you: pick your card and it compares it with each official tier. If you're deciding whether it's time to upgrade anyway, should you upgrade your GPU or just your settings? is the honest first read, and the best 1440p GPU guide covers the recommended-tier jump.

If your PC is below the line

• Play on Xbox instead. It launches on Xbox Series X|S the same day, and it's in Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from launch.
• Upgrade to the cheapest listed card. The RTX 5050 and RX 9060 are the current-generation cards on the minimum tier.
• Wait for launch-week testing. Upscaling matters a lot here, and real-world numbers on specific cards will show up once the game is out. I'd rather you wait a week than guess.

Checked 25 Sep 2026 against Xbox Wire's launch spec post and image, and the Steam store listing. Requirements can change before launch; I'll update this if they do.