Gears 5 PC system requirements revealed

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In the rental-store days, knowing whether a game would run was simple: the cartridge either fit or it didn’t. On PC the conversation is different, which is why Gears 5’s spec sheet drew attention at the end of August 2019. The Coalition, the Microsoft studio that has handled the series since Gears of War 4, released the minimum and recommended settings for the franchise’s fifth main chapter, and the result was well balanced for a game of that size.

The detail that stood out most was Windows 7 support, with different graphics cards listed for each system. Another point worth attention was disk space: 80 GB free, in both the minimum and the recommended specs.

Minimum requirements

Operating system: 64-bit Windows 7 SP1 or 64-bit Windows 10
Processor: AMD FX-6000 series or Intel i3 Skylake
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Graphics card: AMD Radeon R9 280, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (Windows 10) or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Windows 7)
DirectX: version 12
Network: broadband connection
Storage: 80 GB free
Sound card: DirectX compatible

Recommended requirements

Operating system: 64-bit Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 or Intel i5 Skylake
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Graphics card: AMD Radeon RX 570, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (Windows 10) or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (Windows 7)
DirectX: version 12
Network: broadband connection
Storage: 80 GB free
Sound card: DirectX compatible

At the time, Gears 5 already had a date: September 10, 2019 for Xbox One and PC, with early access from September 6 for those who bought the Ultimate Edition. The game was part of Xbox Play Anywhere and arrived on Xbox Game Pass on day one. The story set JD Fenix aside a little and put Kait Diaz at the center, searching for the origin of the Locust Horde.

What came next

Gears 5 was played by 3 million people in its first weekend, Microsoft’s biggest first-party launch since Halo 4 and the biggest Game Pass debut to that point. Critics were favorable: they praised the gameplay, the campaign and the number of modes, but pointed to a lack of novelty in the story. On 15 December 2020 the Hivebusters expansion came out, together with a digital Game of the Year Edition, and the game also got an Xbox Series X|S version. On PC, it is still on sale on Steam.