RTX 2080Ti can't deliver stable 60 FPS in Gears of War: E-Day at Full HD, and RTX 5090 struggles with 4K – and that's without RTX Mega Geometry

DSOGaming keeps putting new releases through the benchmark wringer. This time the outlet turned its attention to the shooter Gears of War: E-Day. The game runs on Unreal Engine 5.6.1, and performance results are now available for a range of AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards.

The test bench looked like this:

• AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor;

• 32GB of DDR5 RAM at 6000MHz;

• AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 7900 XTX, and RX 9070 XT graphics cards;

• NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090 graphics cards;

• Windows 10 64-bit;

• GeForce 617.14 and Radeon Adrenalin Edition 26.9.2 drivers.

All tests ran at Ultra settings. Testers turned off RTX Mega Geometry because only NVIDIA RTX cards support it for now, which kept the comparison between AMD and NVIDIA on equal footing.

At 1080p with Ultra settings, the game ran well on every card except the RTX 2080 Ti. Owners of the Radeon RX 6900 XT and RTX 3080 will want a FreeSync or G-Sync monitor. Everyone else will be fine even on a standard 60Hz display.

At 1440p with Ultra settings, the five most powerful cards delivered a stable experience. The Radeon RX 9070 XT came in slightly behind the RX 7900 XTX, with frame rate dipping to 57 FPS. A FreeSync monitor makes those drops unnoticeable.

At native 4K with Ultra settings, only the RTX 5090 offered smooth gameplay. The RTX 4090, the second-fastest card in the test, fell short of 60 FPS. Without an upscaler, a comfortable experience takes an RTX 5090 and a G-Sync monitor.

The testers noted that DLSS 5 noticeably improves the visuals. According to them, Gears of War: E-Day looks spectacular with the technology, and they recommend turning it on if your GPU supports it.

Keyboard and mouse controls work well. Shaders compile on first launch, so there were no stutters from shader compilation. Minor traversal stutters do appear, though, even though the previous entry, Gears 5, had no such issues.

Overall, Gears of War: E-Day scales well across different setups. Ultra settings at 1080p do not require a top-end card, a mid-range model handles 1440p, and 4K calls for high-end hardware. At 4K, DLSS or FSR is also worth considering.