Independent final-build testing across 25 processors found unusually high CPU utilisation and a 42% gap between two modern Ryzen chips under one deliberately CPU-revealing setup. E-Day is a reminder that an ambitious PC game’s processor can be a real performance limit, not just support for the GPU.
The easiest way to talk about demanding PC games is still to start with the graphics card.
Gears of War: E-Day gives the processor a much bigger role.
Independent final-build testing from Tom’s Hardware compared 25 Intel and AMD CPUs using a GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition at 1080p with the High graphics preset. The setup was deliberately chosen to expose processor differences rather than let the GPU become the first limit.
The result was unusually wide scaling for an Unreal Engine 5 game. Tom’s Hardware measured 168.7fps on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and 118.7fps on a Ryzen 5 7600X in the same test, a 42% gap. It also reported CPU utilisation around 80% to 90% during its testing.
Those figures do not mean every E-Day player can gain 42% by replacing a mainstream processor with a high-end X3D chip.
They show something more useful: once enough GPU headroom exists, E-Day can turn the CPU into a first-class performance constraint.
The 42% number belongs to one exact test
The headline comparison needs its conditions attached.
Tom’s Hardware used an RTX 5090 at 1080p High. This is not a normal balanced gaming setup for most people. It is a useful CPU-testing configuration precisely because the graphics card is powerful enough, and the resolution low enough, to reveal differences between processors.
Under those conditions, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D averaged 168.7fps while the Ryzen 5 7600X averaged 118.7fps. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D also sat well ahead at 153.8fps, while several modern Intel processors clustered around the 150fps range.
The spread matters because many modern games compress CPU differences once the processor is fast enough to keep the graphics card supplied with work.
E-Day does not behave that way in Tom’s Hardware’s test scene. Faster processors and architectures continued to produce meaningful gains.
The gap also narrows when the workload shifts.
Tom’s Hardware found less CPU separation at the heavier Ludicrous preset, where graphics demand rises. Higher resolutions and less extreme GPUs can push the system towards the same outcome: the GPU becomes the main bottleneck and extra CPU headroom matters less.
The 42% result is therefore evidence of CPU sensitivity, not a universal performance forecast.
Low Core Mode is not a free optimisation switch
E-Day includes a Low Core Mode, which sounds like the sort of setting players might enable on a weaker processor for an easy performance gain.
Tom’s Hardware’s results point in the opposite direction for ordinary modern desktop CPUs.
With Low Core Mode enabled, average performance fell across all 25 standard CPU configurations tested. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D dropped from 168.7fps to 133.1fps. The Ryzen 5 7600X fell from 118.7fps to 90.2fps. The Core i3-14100 fell from 90.1fps to 79.2fps.
The mode did make sense in a deliberately extreme case. Tom’s Hardware disabled cores on the Core i3-14100 until the system was effectively running as a dual-core processor. In that constrained setup, Low Core Mode improved behaviour and addressed severe streaming problems and pauses.
The practical distinction is important.
Low Core Mode appears to be a fallback for genuinely core-limited hardware, not a general-purpose “make the CPU run faster” option for current desktop systems.
Someone running a normal six-core, eight-core or larger modern processor should not assume the lower-core path is better simply because their CPU usage looks high.
High CPU use is not automatically bad optimisation
Seeing a processor at 80% or 90% utilisation can look alarming, especially in a game running on Unreal Engine 5.
High utilisation by itself is not proof of poor optimisation.
A game can use more CPU resources because it is successfully spreading work across available cores. What matters is whether that work produces useful performance, whether frame delivery remains stable and how the game scales as hardware changes.
E-Day’s benchmark results are notable because the utilisation comes with measurable scaling.
The game is not simply hammering the CPU while every processor delivers the same frame rate. Tom’s Hardware found meaningful differences through a wide modern CPU pool, which suggests the engine and game workload can convert additional processor capability into higher performance under CPU-limited conditions.
The Coalition has also built E-Day around a demanding modern rendering stack. Xbox says the PC version uses DirectX 12 and hardware ray tracing, with DLSS 4.5, AMD FSR, Unreal Engine TSR, Intel XeSS and Advanced Shader Delivery support. The developer has described the game as being optimised across a broad range of PC hardware.
Those are first-party optimisation claims. The independent results are more useful for understanding where the limits actually appear.
The GPU still becomes the problem at higher settings
DSOGaming tested the final PC build using a Ryzen 9 7950X3D across graphics cards ranging from an RTX 2080 Ti and RX 6900 XT to an RTX 5090. Its Ultra testing disabled RTX Mega Geometry so AMD and Nvidia cards could be compared more directly.
At 1080p Ultra, the outlet found that most of its tested GPUs could deliver a good experience. At 1440p the hardware requirement rose. At native 4K Ultra, DSOGaming found only the RTX 5090 capable of sustaining what it considered a smooth experience, while the RTX 4090 remained below 60fps.
This is the other half of the E-Day hardware story.
At a CPU-revealing 1080p setup with an RTX 5090, processor choice can move frame rates dramatically. At native 4K with heavy graphics settings, the GPU can take control again.
Neither component replaces the other as the thing that matters.
Modern PC performance is increasingly about where the bottleneck moves as resolution, image quality, upscaling, ray tracing and target frame rate change.
E-Day makes that balance unusually visible.
One game cannot define Unreal Engine 5
It would be easy to turn these results into a broader claim that Unreal Engine 5 games are becoming heavily CPU-bound.
The evidence does not support that conclusion.
Tom’s Hardware described E-Day as unusual compared with many other UE5 titles it has tested. This is one game, one final build and a set of controlled benchmark conditions.
Other UE5 games can have different simulation workloads, world streaming, destruction, AI, animation, draw-call behaviour and rendering choices. They can also be limited by the GPU much earlier.
E-Day is still useful because it breaks a familiar PC-upgrade assumption.
A processor that feels “good enough” because most games are GPU-limited can become a meaningful ceiling when a game has enough CPU work and the graphics card has enough headroom to expose it.
For high-refresh players in particular, that matters.
The lesson is about balance, not benchmark hierarchy
Gears of War: E-Day launches fully on 6 October, after Premium Edition early access began on 1 October.
Its first independent final-build tests make the CPU side of PC performance harder to ignore.
The 9800X3D’s 42% lead over the 7600X is not a universal E-Day gap. Low Core Mode is not a free performance button. High CPU utilisation is not proof of bad optimisation. And none of this establishes a new rule for every Unreal Engine 5 game.
What the results do show is that a modern, visually ambitious PC game can make processor capability visible again even when the graphics card remains crucial.
For years, “put more money into the GPU” has been sound gaming-PC advice in many workloads.
E-Day is a useful reminder that the answer becomes less simple when the game can actually use the CPU you give it.
