Gears of War: E-Day Brings DLSS 4.5, Ray Tracing, and an Exclusive RTX 5080 Giveaway

Gears of War: E-Day launches on October 6, and NVIDIA has finally given PC players a closer look at what makes this version special. The company's technology partnership with The Coalition delivers an extensive list of graphics and performance enhancements, positioning the prequel as one of Xbox's most polished PC releases yet.

Xbox and NVIDIA also used the announcement to detail hardware support across the board, along with a custom GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition built around Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago.

Whether you're coming back to Sera after years away or living through Emergence Day for the first time, the PC build looks like it was planned around performance from the start rather than bolted on afterward.

NVIDIA and The Coalition Partner on the PC Version

The Coalition is working with NVIDIA again on what it calls the definitive PC version of E-Day. The stated goal isn't just checking a box for the newest graphics features. It's making sure the game runs well across a wide spread of hardware while still giving high-end RTX owners something to push against.

Rendering Lead Mike Perzel said the team wanted to keep the campaign's cinematic look intact while still giving PC players the image quality, responsiveness, and framerate they'd expect. That's part of why the game ships with several upscaling and latency tools instead of committing to one vendor's ecosystem alone.

DLSS 4.5 Headlines the Feature Set

For GeForce RTX owners, the headline feature is native DLSS 4.5 support, which includes:

• DLSS Super Resolution
• DLAA
• NVIDIA Reflex
• DLSS Ray Reconstruction
• DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi Frame Generation on supported RTX 50 Series GPUs

Dynamic Multi Frame Generation is the one worth paying attention to. On compatible RTX 50 Series cards, it lets the GPU generate extra AI-assisted frames, pushing framerates up without tanking image quality. Paired with NVIDIA Reflex, the goal is to keep input lag down even with everything turned up.

Feature Support at a Glance

Hardware Ray Tracing Comes Standard

The Coalition is also building hardware-accelerated ray tracing into the base game rather than treating it as an optional add-on. That covers:

• Ray-traced lighting
• Ray-traced reflections
• Improved environmental detail
• More realistic destruction and atmospheric effects

Since E-Day sends the series back to the first days of the Locust invasion, better lighting should do real work here. The Coalition has talked up the horror angle since the reveal, and darker, more dynamic lighting is a direct line to that atmosphere.

Support Isn't Limited to NVIDIA Hardware

PC optimization isn't locked to GeForce owners. The game will also support:

• AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR)
• Intel XeSS
• Unreal Engine Temporal Super Resolution (TSR)

Xbox also confirmed Advanced Shader Delivery, or ASD, which cuts down or removes the long first-launch shader compilation that's become a running complaint in Unreal Engine 5 games. Instead of sitting through a big shader-build process before you can play, shaders stream in as needed.

It's a fix a lot of PC players have been asking for, given how often shader stutter shows up in recent UE5 titles.

Built for PC From the Start

The Coalition says Gears of War: E-Day was developed alongside Xbox from day one rather than ported over afterward. Confirmed platforms include:

• Xbox Series X|S
• Xbox PC
• Steam
• Xbox Play Anywhere
• Game Pass on day one

The campaign supports solo play, online co-op, and split-screen co-op. Multiplayer adds Horde Siege alongside the usual Versus modes.

Built in Unreal Engine 5, E-Day goes back to Emergence Day itself, fourteen years before the original Gears of War, with Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago at the center of humanity's first contact with the Locust Horde.

NVIDIA's Custom RTX 5080 Giveaway

To mark the partnership, NVIDIA is giving away a custom GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition themed around E-Day. It's decked out with artwork based on Marcus and Dom plus the game's signature crimson color scheme, one of the more distinctive Founders Edition designs NVIDIA has put out this year.

Fans can enter by commenting #RTXPowersPlay on NVIDIA GeForce's promotional post. NVIDIA is also showing off the game during its GeForce Summer Nights livestream, hosted by GeForce_JacobF, with another look at E-Day running on RTX hardware.

Editions, Pricing, and Pre-Order Bonuses

Pre-orders are live now through Xbox. The base Gears of War: E-Day edition runs $69.99, while the Premium Edition runs $99.99. Regardless of which one you pick, every pre-order carries the same bonus: early access to the Open Beta, an Xbox gift card, and the Exfil Dom Character Skin and Exfil Weapon Skin Set unlocked in-game at launch.

The Open Beta early access window is expected to run August 6 through 10, though Xbox notes exact dates may shift slightly depending on platform and subscription. The pre-order offer itself is valid for anyone who orders before October 6 at 7:59 am PT, and Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers get the full game on launch day without buying an edition separately.