Gears of War: E-Day launched today for anyone with the Premium Edition (the full release comes on October 6), which means reviewers have already had some time to do some early testing across a wide range of hardware. This includes gaming handhelds, from the Steam Deck to the MSI Claw, but it looks like owners of the former won’t be having a great time with the freshly released E-Day.

E-Day is available on Xbox and PC, and the PC system requirements ask for an RTX 5050 or RX 6600 as a minimum for graphics. In other words, ray tracing support is required, as the game relies on Unreal Engine 5.8 features such as Lumen and MegaLights for its lighting pipeline. A couple of publications have tested E-Day on the Steam Deck, and it averages below 20 FPS on a low preset.

Gaming PC handhelds tested in Gears of War E-Day

Across five handhelds tested by TechPowerUp, the Steam Deck LCD was unsurprisingly the worst of the lot. The next step up was the ASUS ROG Ally X (2024), rather than the original non-X Ally, which was not tested. The best-performing was the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, powered by an Intel Arc G3 Extreme. Based on that, you could expect similar performance on the new Acer Predator Atlas 7 and Atlas 8 handhelds, also on the Arc G3 platform.

A review of Gears of War: E-Day by Steam Deck HQ also scores the performance with a lackluster 2-out-of-5 rating. While the game itself received high praise, actually running it on Valve’s popular handheld did not offer an enjoyable experience. According to SDHQ, “it’s just not viable” on the Steam Deck due to regular frame drops, even on the lowest settings.

Sadly, for those who want to play this on the Steam Deck, it’s just not viable. It does completely boot up, and we can play the game, but even on the lowest possible settings, it will regularly dip below 30 FPS. As of right now, I don’t recommend playing Gears of War: E-Day on the Deck at all.

Gears of War: E-Day review, Steam Deck HQ

To add to that, TechPowerUp didn’t even bother offering optimized settings for the Steam Deck, saying E-Day “isn’t playable on the Deck even when you switch everything to Low and set upscaling to Ultra Performance”. Valve’s handheld only offers a 4-core processor, and the game is “simply too CPU-heavy” for performance to offer “anything close to a stable 30 FPS”.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.