Gears of War E-Day is an uncharacteristically CPU-heavy Unreal Engine 5 game — benchmarking 25 CPUs from Intel and AMD and investigating ‘low core mode’

Gears of War E-Day stands out as a particularly demanding Unreal Engine 5 title, requiring heavy CPU utilization. During testing, the CPU usage ranged from 80% to 90%, far exceeding typical UE5 games. This heavy load remained consistent throughout the game, regardless of scene complexity or interactions. While other UE5 games like Clair Obscur and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered suffer from poor CPU scaling, Gears of War E-Day exhibits clear scaling between various CPUs.

For instance, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D outperformed the Ryzen 5 7600X by 42% at 1080p with the High graphics preset. The game's CPU scaling becomes even more pronounced at higher presets, with a nearly 29% difference between the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 9600X. Interestingly, Intel's CPUs, particularly those with more cores, showed superior performance in Gears of War E-Day compared to AMD's offerings. This suggests that core count plays a crucial role in the game's performance.