•Patrik Mršnik• 6 min read
Games
Gears of War: E-Day PC Performance Still Needs Work
Gears of War: E-Day PC performance is the weakest part of an otherwise strong launch. The game looks stunning on a good rig, but long sessions run into memory trouble, and the shader fix that skips the long first compile left NVIDIA cards out at launch. The Coalition already lists the memory problem among its E-Day known issues.
We flagged both in our Gears of War: E-Day review. The game launched on October 6, 2026, for Xbox Series X|S and PC through the Xbox app and Steam, with early access from October 1. A patch followed on October 5.
Below, we cover the benchmarks, the known issues, and the October 5 patch.
Gears of War: E-Day PC Performance Summary
Native 4K is a stretch. Only the RTX 5090 ran smoothly at native 4K Ultra in DSOGaming's tests.
Advanced Shader Delivery cuts first-launch compiling by about 95%, but NVIDIA RTX support only arrives later in October.
Long sessions can cause memory issues and crashes. Reload a checkpoint every couple of hours and check Task Manager after quitting.
The October 5 patch doesn't name the memory problem.
How Does Gears of War: E-Day Run on PC?
On our RTX 4080 and Ryzen 7 9800X3D review rig, Gears of War: E-Day looked incredible, with Lumen lighting that made every burning street worth stopping for. The CPU held up even with three squads and a world boss on screen in Horde Siege.
DSOGaming tested eight GPUs at Ultra settings with RTX Mega Geometry switched off, and only one card handled native 4K:
Resolution (Ultra) | What the tests showed |
|---|---|
1080p | Every tested GPU ran it well except the RTX 2080 Ti |
1440p | The top five GPUs were smooth, with some RX 9070 XT drops to 57fps |
Native 4K | Only the RTX 5090 was smooth, and the RTX 4090 couldn't hit 60fps |
For extra frames, Xbox's official PC features post lists DLSS 4.5 with Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, FSR, XeSS, Unreal's TSR and NVIDIA Reflex. Multi frame generation needs an RTX 50-series card on NVIDIA, which ruled it out on our 4080.
Steam reports vary, from 70–80fps at 3440x1440 High on an RTX 4070 Ti Super to complaints that launch runs choppier than the beta.
Advanced Shader Delivery Splits AMD and NVIDIA
Advanced Shader Delivery ships precompiled shaders with the game. Microsoft's DirectX Developer Blog says it cuts first-launch compiling in E-Day by about 95%, from several minutes on a typical PC to a few seconds. It needs Windows 11 24H2 or newer and the Xbox PC app.
At launch, support covered AMD RDNA 1 through RDNA 4 GPUs and Snapdragon X2 chips. Every NVIDIA RTX card joins later in October, with no exact date yet. Until then, NVIDIA players sit through the full compile, and our 4080 kept us waiting before the menu even loaded.
Steam isn't named in Microsoft's setup notes, so treat ASD there as unconfirmed. After that first compile, DSOGaming saw no shader stutter, only a few traversal hitches.
E-Day Known Issues: Crashes, Memory and Ghost Processes
The Coalition's launch notes warn that playing through the whole game without reloading a checkpoint or restarting may cause memory issues. If an encounter or objective stops progressing, reload a checkpoint. The same notes say the game process may keep running after you close it.
Full crashes show up too. Our reviewer hit them in long campaign sessions, and in one Steam Community thread, owners of RTX 4090 and RTX 5080 rigs said crashes came most often around every two hours. More often in Horde Siege.
Issue | What you see | Workaround |
|---|---|---|
Memory in long sessions (official) | An encounter or objective stops progressing | Reload a checkpoint |
Crashes in long sessions (player reports) | Game closes to desktop | Restart every 1–2 hours |
Process stays open (official) | Game keeps running after you quit | End it in Task Manager |
Reloading a checkpoint every couple of hours and checking Task Manager after closing kept us going, though nobody should need a timer for a shooter.
What the October 5 Patch Fixed
The October 5 patch notes list various stability, performance, hardware compatibility and reporting improvements. No line item names the memory problem or the lingering process.
Act 2 Chapter 2 gets fixes at Allfather's Plaza and Black Raven Down, and Act 4 Chapter 1 side objectives start properly. One cause of the stuck Power Station defense in Act 4 Chapter 2 is gone too. Players joining a campaign also stop receiving War Journal progress and Forge rewards earned before they arrived.
Multiplayer fixes cover certain Siege Blitz Secure objectives, the missing Plaza Ruins extraction helicopter, Versus Social matches stuck on the waiting screen, and a Demolition bomb that could stick mid-defuse.
Our sessions felt steadier after the patch. Is the PC version fixed? Not yet, though it's playable and improving.
FAQs About Gears of War: E-Day PC Performance
Final Words
E-Day's visuals already justify a strong GPU. The real test for this port is session length, and for several Steam players the ceiling sits around two hours. Next up is NVIDIA support for Advanced Shader Delivery, which should cut the first-launch wait for every RTX owner.
Memory is the bigger worry, and a patch note that names it would mean more than any stability line. Until then, save Horde Siege marathons for later.
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“ A former sports journalist and editor, Patrik joined Gameboost SEO team in 2026. He has spent most of his life playing Football Manager, but his sphere of interests spreads through whole gaming universe.”
