Gears of War: E-Day Available Today With DLSS 4.5, Ray Tracing & RTX Mega Geometry

Starting today via Premium Edition Early Access, and from October 6th for all other players, experience the horror and brutality of Emergence Day, fourteen years before the original Gears of War. Join Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago in a gripping origin-story campaign as the Locust Horde first erupt from below, igniting a desperate fight for survival. Then, rally your squad and fight on in multiplayer with a reimagination of Gears’ iconic PvE mode, Horde Siege, or go head-to-head in Versus PvP.

On GeForce RTX PCs and laptops, and GeForce NOW, you can experience Gears of War: E-Day with the highest levels of image quality and performance thanks to DLSS 4.5, RTX Mega Geometry, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing, giving you the definitive PC experience.

Built from the ground up with Unreal Engine 5 and DirectX 12 by The Coalition, Gears of War: E-Day enhances its amazing gameplay with stunning graphics, courtesy of the engine’s latest technologies. 

MegaLights powers performant rendering of ray-traced shadows from up to 100 light sources, while Lumen enables ray-traced global illumination lighting and ambient occlusion shading. And other new engine advancements enable real-time destruction, widescale use of volumetric effects and particles, and larger, more explosive set pieces. Combined, these technologies deliver players the most technically ambitious and visceral Gears of War entry to date.

Thanks to a technical partnership with The Coalition, GeForce RTX gamers can activate a suite of features to accelerate and further enhance Gears of War: E-Day, delivering the definitive PC experience:

Like other leading Unreal Engine 5 games, Gears of War: E-Day makes extensive use of Nanite, a virtualized geometry system that enables seamless, automatic level of detail scaling for game elements, allowing developers to create cities filled with unique geometry, environments with unique terrain and mountains, and forests full of thick foliage and thousands of trees.

However, when used in conjunction with Unreal Engine 5’s ray tracing, Nanite game elements switch to a single, static low-detail mesh for ray tracing, since it's prohibitively expensive to build acceleration structures and ray trace Nanite game elements with existing DXR 1.2 and Vulkan APIs. For the player, the game element will appear to be rendering at full detail, but the ray-traced shadow or reflection will use the low detail mesh, causing visual discontinuities and artifacts.

After 6 years of research and development, NVIDIA’s engineers have solved this problem and delivered the solutions as part of NVIDIA RTX Mega Geometry. These debut today in Gears of War: E-Day, and will be adopted by Microsoft’s DirectX Raytracing 2.0 standard (DXR 2.0), codifying this advancement for the entire game industry, and making ray-traced Nanite possible in all Unreal Engine 5 games.

The example below shows a visualization of the ray tracing scene in the "Market" Multiplayer map. With RTX Mega Geometry enabled, more objects are ray-traced and each object has substantially more geometry. Notice how the fish, lobsters, freezer bins, weight scale, and even floor mats are all highly detailed now. Additionally, difficult objects like the ropes on the back wall are now complete and properly represented in ray tracing.

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As a result of RTX Mega Geometry improving the fidelity of the geometry used in ray tracing, shadows and reflections are more accurate across all elements of the scene. Missing shadows are resolved and incomplete shadows are corrected. Notice how the shadows cast by the ropes on the back wall are complete and exhibit the proper amount of occlusion when RTX Mega Geometry is enabled. The glossy reflection of the lobster and other items on the metal tables are also improved.

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The visualization below shows another example of how the ray tracing scene is substantially more detailed with RTX Mega Geometry enabled. Notice how plants, glass bottles, and the planter shelves that were previously missing are now present. Rounded objects like bottles, cups, cucumbers, pumpkins, and onions are now all represented at their highest detail level.

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These geometric improvements result in a more accurate, immersive and realistic scene Notice how shadows are properly cast from foliage, planters, glass bottles, coffee cups, and the planter shelves. Previously incomplete or inaccurate shadows are fixed.

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Beyond the benefits seen in static screenshots, gameplay is further improved, as ray-traced shadows and reflections could flicker or otherwise artifact when the player or camera were in motion. 

Combined with the higher levels of detail and higher ray tracing settings available on PC, RTX Mega Geometry allows GeForce RTX gamers to experience Gears of War: E-Day with the best possible image quality, heightening immersion and the cinematic experience. Please note, a GeForce RTX GPU with at least 12GB of VRAM is required to enable RTX Mega Geometry.

Gears of War: E-Day includes support for DLSS 4.5 with Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, enabling all GeForce RTX players to further enhance image quality and accelerate performance.

For players wanting the absolute highest frame rates, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation allows GeForce RTX 50 Series players to activate up to 6X Frame Generation, or to have the X factor adjusted on the fly to hit a player-selected target frame rate, based on the demands of the current scene, optimizing frame rates and PC latency.

Using a fixed 6X multiplier with Ultra Preset ray tracing and RTX Mega Geometry, Gears of War: E-Day runs on average 7.5X faster than native rendering at 4K when DLSS 4.5 is activated. This enables GeForce RTX 5090 owners to play the game at its very best at up to 410 frames per second. On the GeForce RTX 5080, frame rates are over 290, and the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti hits 250 FPS, enabling you to max out the capabilities of the latest 240Hz 4K OLEDs.

At 2560x1440, a 5.8X DLSS 4.5 performance multiplier enables Ultra preset, ray-traced Gears of War: E-Day gameplay at up to 500 frames per second on the GeForce RTX 5090, at up to 380 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5080, 330 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, and 275 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5070.

At 1920x1080, DLSS 4.5’s 5.8X performance multiplier enables all of our benchmarked GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs to run Ultra preset, ray-traced Gears of War: E-Day at 300 FPS, and up to 600 FPS on the GeForce RTX 5090.

NVIDIA Reflex is a game-changer, reducing PC latency on GeForce graphics cards, desktops and laptops so your actions occur quicker, giving you a competitive edge in multiplayer matches, and making single-player titles more responsive and enjoyable.

Since its debut in September 2020, NVIDIA Reflex has reduced PC latency in hundreds of games, including virtually all of the most popular competitive shooters, over 90% of GeForce gamers have activated Reflex, and those gamers enhanced over 10 billion hours of gameplay in one year alone.

In Gears of War: E-Day, GeForce RTX gamers can decrease PC latency in single-player, co-op, and competitive modes, ensuring maximum responsiveness at all times.

Activated in the graphics settings, NVIDIA Reflex reduced PC latency by up to 50% in our Gears of War: E-Day campaign benchmark! Reflex makes your games even more enjoyable without any downsides, making it a no brainer to activate in every supported game.

For an optimum experience in Gears of War: E-Day, with the high frame rates shown above, be sure to download and install our Gears of War: E-Day GeForce Game Ready Driver from our website, or the NVIDIA app.

Whether you’re away from your GeForce RTX PC or laptop, or simply don’t have a GeForce RTX system, you can still play Gears of War: E-Day streaming it from the cloud across devices with an Ultimate GeForce NOW membership at launch, tapping into GeForce RTX powered performance – soon with DLSS 4.5, ray tracing and RTX Mega Geometry.

Sync your supported PC gaming libraries and bring your gaming collection with you to play Gears of War: E-Day and thousands of other supported titles without waiting around for downloads or installs.

Head over to the GeForce NOW website to learn more.

To celebrate the launch of Gears of War: E-Day, we’ve partnered with system builders, OEMs and add-in card providers globally to create custom GeForce RTX 50 Series PCs and GPUs inspired by Gears of War: E-Day. Best of all: you can enter giveaways for each for a chance to win!

GIGABYTE is giving away 3 limited-edition GeForce RTX 5080 GAMING OC 16G graphics cards, featuring custom Gears of War: E-Day backplates.

Only three units feature this custom backplate, and residents of the USA and Canada can enter through AORUS North America social channels or this giveaway link for a chance to win.

CyberPowerPC’s custom Gears of War: E-Day is built around a Phanteks Evolv X2S Midtower case featuring a fully custom Gears of War: E-Day UV wrap. Inside, the system pairs a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition with an equally powerful CPU, cooled by a TRYX Panorama SE LCD liquid cooler, and backed by 32GB of DDR5-6000MHz of RGB memory.

Full Specs:

• CyberPowerPC Phanteks Evolv X2S Midtower Case
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition
• Intel Core Ultra 270K Plus
• Z890 ATX Gaming Motherboard
• TRYX Panorama SE LCD AIO CPU Liquid Cooler
• 32GB DDR5-6000MHz RGB Memory
• 1TB PCI-E NVMe SSD
• 1000W 80 Plus Gold PSU
• Windows 11 Home Advanced

Gamers in the United States and Canada can head here for a chance to win.

Emergence Day is coming, and Starforge Systems has created a custom PC ready to face it. This limited-edition Gears of War: E-Day system places Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago front and center in bold red-and-black artwork across the case, with red interior lighting carrying the design throughout the build, capturing the intensity of their fight at the beginning of the Locust War.

Inside, a GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition graphics card* is paired with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, 32GB of DDR5 memory, and a 2TB NVMe SSD - gamers in the United States and Canada wanting to win the system can participate in the giveaway through to October 29th.

Full Specs:

• Chassis: Custom UV Printed APNX V2-F
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• Graphics Card: GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition*
• Motherboard: ASUS Prime B850-Plus WIFI
• Memory: 32GB DDR5 6000
• Storage: 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVME
• Power Supply: MSI MAG A850GN PCIE5
• Operating System: Windows 11 Home (Bloatware Free)
• Cooling: Starforge Custom Bitspower 360mm Liquid Cooler
• Chassis Fans: 3 x Bitspower 120mm ARGB, 4 x APNX FP3-140
• Lighting: RGB Front Panel, Internal RGB Lightbar, RGB Fans

*GPU in photos will be swapped for a GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition before shipping to the winner

There are even more DLSS, ray tracing and path tracing integrations arriving soon for a whole host of games. Return regularly for a rundown of the next DLSS and RTX titles, and head here to see the full list of RTX-enhanced games and apps, along with a list of all games and apps with verified support for NVIDIA app’s DLSS overrides.