Gears of War: E-Day PC Settings Guide – Best Settings for Better FPS

Gears of War: E-Day is demanding on PC, but the good news is that you do not need to run the game on Low to get a meaningful performance boost.

The biggest takeaway from launch testing is that High is the best place to start. It keeps most of the visual quality of Ultra while giving back a noticeable amount of performance, and it avoids the flatter lighting and weaker shadowing that becomes much more obvious on Low.

If you just want a good setup without spending an hour in the settings menu, start here:

Setting	Recommendation
Graphics Preset	High
Textures	High
Upscaling	DLSS / FSR / XeSS / TSR
Upscaling Quality	Quality at 1080p/1440p, Balanced at 4K
Low Core Mode	Off
RTX Mega Geometry	Off
NVIDIA Reflex	On
Frame Generation	Optional for Campaign
Motion Blur	Off
Chromatic Aberration	Off

High Is the Sweet Spot

The preset scaling in E-Day is more aggressive than you might expect.

TechSpot's launch testing found a very large jump when stepping down from Ludicrous to Ultra, followed by another useful gain when moving from Ultra to High. On the GPUs they tested at 1440p, Ultra to High improved performance by around 22%, while the visual difference was much smaller than the frame-rate difference.

That is why I would not recommend Ultra as the default setting, even on a reasonably powerful PC.

Medium is still a good fallback if High is not enough, but I would only use Low on hardware that genuinely needs it. Low starts stripping back the shadowing and ambient occlusion that give E-Day's environments a lot of their depth.

In short:

High first. Medium if needed. Low only as a last resort.

Ludicrous is mainly useful for screenshots, comparisons or extremely high-end systems. For normal gameplay, the performance cost is difficult to justify.

The Settings That Actually Matter

A lot of the options can safely stay close to the High preset. The more important settings are the ones that affect how the game handles resolution, CPU load and ray-traced geometry.

Textures can usually stay on High. If you have plenty of VRAM, Ultra textures are reasonable too. Texture quality is not where I would start cutting performance unless the game is warning about memory usage or you are seeing obvious stutter.

Low Core Mode should normally stay off. This setting sounds like it should help weaker CPUs, but launch CPU testing showed the opposite on normal desktop processors. Tom's Hardware saw performance drop when Low Core Mode was enabled on several CPUs, including a Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

It appears to be aimed more at genuinely limited-core hardware than a typical gaming desktop.

RTX Mega Geometry is another setting I would leave off for an optimized setup. It can improve the handling of detailed ray-traced geometry, but testing showed around a 10% performance cost on supported RTX hardware. The difference can be visible in some scenes, but it is not something I would trade FPS for unless the game is already running comfortably above your target.

One setting worth experimenting with is Reflections. Some launch comparisons found that reflections could look noticeably softer below the highest setting. If you have extra GPU headroom, try increasing Reflections on their own instead of moving the whole game to Ultra or Ludicrous.

That gives you the better reflections without paying for every other expensive setting at the same time.

DLSS, FSR and the Best Upscaling Mode

The official PC requirements for E-Day already assume the use of upscaling, so using DLSS, FSR, XeSS or TSR is not really a compromise here. It is part of how the game is intended to reach its performance targets.

At 1080p, use Quality mode if you can. Dropping to Performance at this resolution can make fine details and distant geometry noticeably softer.

At 1440p, I would still start with Quality. If you are close to your target but need another push, Balanced is the next setting to try.

At 4K, Balanced makes much more sense. You are starting from a much higher output resolution, so the image holds together better than it does at 1080p.

A simple rule:

Resolution	Start With
1080p	Quality
1440p	Quality
4K	Balanced

Only go more aggressive if the game still cannot hold the frame rate you want.

Frame Generation is useful in Campaign if your base performance is already decent. I would not rely on it to rescue a very low native frame rate, and for Versus I would prioritize lower latency and real rendered frames first.

E-Day Is More CPU-Heavy Than Most UE5 Games

One of the more interesting things about E-Day is how much the CPU matters.

Tom's Hardware tested 25 processors and found much larger CPU scaling than you normally see in Unreal Engine 5 titles. At 1080p High, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D was around 42% faster than the Ryzen 5 7600X in their testing.

That matters because lowering your graphics settings will not always solve the problem.

If you drop from Ultra to High, reduce the resolution, or turn on a more aggressive upscaler and your FPS barely changes, you are probably running into a CPU limit rather than a GPU limit.

In that situation, lowering image quality further is mostly wasted.

Use the game's built-in benchmark and watch how the frame rate responds when you make changes. If the result barely moves after a big GPU-side reduction, stop sacrificing visuals.

Recommended Settings by Resolution

For 1080p, High with Quality upscaling is the best starting point. If you are below 60 FPS, move the preset to Medium before using an aggressive upscaling mode.

For 1440p, High + Quality works well as the baseline. Balanced is worth using if you are targeting a higher refresh rate or running a mid-range GPU.

For 4K, High or Ultra with Balanced upscaling is the sensible starting point. If you are trying to hold 60 FPS on hardware closer to the recommended tier, Performance mode may be necessary.

The Coalition's final PC targets roughly line up with that approach:

Target	Official Preset	Example GPU Tier
1080p / 60 FPS	Medium	RTX 2060 / RX 6600 class
1440p / 60+ FPS	High	RTX 3060 Ti / RX 6700 XT class
4K / 60+ FPS	Ultra	RTX 5070 Ti / RX 7900 XT class

These official targets also assume upscaling.

Best Overall Setup

For most players, I would start with:

High preset, High textures, Quality upscaling, Low Core Mode off and RTX Mega Geometry off.

At 1440p, switch from Quality to Balanced if you need more FPS. At 4K, start at Balanced.

If that still is not enough, move from High to Medium before destroying image quality with Low.

The goal is not to chase the highest number in the FPS counter. E-Day looks good because of its lighting, shadows and dense environments, and High keeps most of that intact while getting rid of a lot of the unnecessary performance cost above it.

For more E-Day coverage, including Campaign guides, collectibles and progression, visit the Gears of War: E-Day guide hub.