Gears of War: E-Day October 14 Patch Targets Crashes and Slowdowns in Long Sessions

The Coalition released a big Gears of War: E-Day patch on October 14 that, according to its notes, touches every area of the game. The part that matters most on PC: multiple memory improvements to address crashing and performance degradation during long play sessions, plus stability and optimization improvements on PC, Xbox and handhelds. If you noticed the game getting worse the longer you played, this is the patch aimed at that problem. On October 7 we told you which GPUs run it at launch; this patch’s notes don’t mention any change to the requirements.

What’s happening

The Coalition says it has been listening to player feedback since launch. The PC-relevant parts of the notes:

• Memory: multiple improvements to address crashing and performance degradation in long sessions, on PC, Xbox and handhelds.
• Stability and optimization: numerous improvements across applicable hardware configurations.
• Accounts and login: fixes for multiple account linking and login issues, and for the Social Menu and friends list.
• Anti-cheat: further improvements to server anti-cheat protection.

The patch also fixes Ranked Versus placement matches, which had put some players in the wrong skill division.

One thing to keep in mind: not every dropout comes from your PC. According to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, The Coalition confirmed that DDoS attacks over the weekend caused intermittent disconnects and login issues. If that happened to you, it wasn’t your hardware.

What to do

The notes don’t list graphics settings or recommended drivers, and they give no numbers on how much performance improves. Here’s what they do say:

• Update the game: the patch has been live since October 14.
• Report what still breaks: The Coalition asks you to get in touch at aka.ms/GearsSupport if you find a bug or run into a problem.

The patch also adds two quality of life tweaks: smaller on-screen diagnostic text in the bottom left corner, and a setting to turn off the audio chimes for Collectibles in the Campaign.

Gears of War: E-Day PC requirements

In canirun’s benchmarks, the RTX 2060, RTX 3060 and RX 7600 clear the minimum and grade D against the recommended: it runs, but it struggles. The RTX 4060 and RTX 3070 grade C, which is tight. To meet the recommended with a B you need something like the RTX 4070 or RX 9070 XT, and the RTX 5080 reaches an A. The GTX 1660 Super and RX 580 fall below the minimum.

On Steam Deck, Valve hasn’t verified it yet. Our spec-based estimate gives it an F and puts it below the minimum; treat that as an estimate only. More on the game’s Steam Deck page.

Can your PC run Gears of War: E-Day?

Here’s how your setup grades against E-Day and Space Marine 2, another heavy third-person action shooter:

Game	Rec. GPU score	Rec. RAM	Min. RAM	Your PC
Gears of War: E-Day	25,500	16 GB	12 GB	?
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2	24,750	16 GB	8 GB	?

If you fall short, the full game page shows how your GPU and RAM stack up against each requirement.

Sources: October 14 Patch Notes, Patch announcement on Steam, Gears of War: E-Day on Steam, Rock, Paper, Shotgun: DDoS attacks