Gears 5 PC Performance Review & Optimisation Guide

Graphical Settings Comparison Low, Medium, High and Ultra  

We often hear some PC gamers give this advice. “Play your games at high settings”, stating that Ultra settings usually deliver negligible visual differences and come at a considerable performance cost. This line of thinking is often followed with statements like “You won’t notice the difference, aside from the framerate boost.” This way of thinking does not apply to Gears 5. 

Every main preset in Gears 5 brings with it a significant boost in graphical fidelity. Note that we aren’t saying that Gears 5 doesn’t look good at Medium or High Settings, just that Ultra is a clear cut above the other presets. 

Gears 5’s Low Settings make major cuts to every aspect of Gears 5’s graphics, presenting players with low-polycount geometry, low-resolution textures and a huge reduction in distant detail. Even the shrubbery in this destroyed cityscape is cut. We do not recommend playing Gears 5 with settings below Medium. 

A lot of the downsides of Gears 5’s low preset can be mitigated with higher texture and streaming settings, but even with that pop-in will be noticeable for some details and characters will look very chunky. 
 

(Low VS Medium)

 
Moving to Gears 5’s High settings will grant players access to higher resolution textures, more detailed rubble in the mid-far distance and significant leaps in shadow detail. Gears 5 looks great using the game’s high preset, making it the preset to use when your PC isn’t ready for Ultra. 

One thing that we can clearly see here is that the game’s distant mountains come in the form of a texture, which sees a significant boost in detail at high settings. This is a clever way for The Coalition to ground this city within a larger world while taking away the need to render a full mountain and all of its trees. If you can’t travel there, why render it properly? Clever. 

(Medium VS High)

 
At Ultra the largest visible difference that we can see is the game’s use of higher resolution geometry in both medium and far distance objects. The parasol in the distance gains a new model. Nearby walls and cover become more detailed. Even the rooftops of distant buildings gain more geometric detail. 

Scene lighting also becomes a lot more complex. We can see shade appearing on nearby plants, shadows gain sharper edges and several areas of the scene achieve more accurate shading. 

(High VS Ultra)