Gears of War 4 May Update Adds Multi-GPU Support

It took them long enough. The Coalition took to Xbox Wire today to detail the contents of the update that will be hitting Gears of War 4 tomorrow, May 2. The May update adds two maps to the game. The first is Dawn, which is a brand new map set in an Outsider village built around an abandoned mining colony.

The other map, which returns from Gears of War 2, is Security. This map was highly requested by the fans, so The Coalition remastered the map to fit modern graphical and gameplay standards. On Windows 10 PC, Gears of Wars 4 will get Multi-GPU support to push the visuals of the game. 

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We are excited to announce that Multi-GPU support arrives with the May Update on May 2nd 2017 for our Windows 10 players! Our Windows 10 team have been hard at work implementing support for users who use dual graphics card setups, and now fans can take full advantage of their setup to really push the stunning visuals of Gears of War 4. 
 
For those who don’t know, Multi-GPU (also known as mGPU) enables users to use two Graphics Cards in combination in order to boost the overall GPU capabilities of their rig. Gears of War 4 now utilizes up to two linked discrete GPUs to increase rendering performance up to 80%. 
 
Before getting started, ensure you read the following guide for a list of required updates and information on what to expect from our Multi-GPU support. 
 
Software Updates 
Multi GPU in Gears of War 4 requires some updates in order to function correctly. Not updating your graphics drivers may result in corruption or crashes during gameplay or when changing your visual settings. 
 
Windows 10: We strongly recommend you update to the Creators Update of Windows 10. The update contains fixes to the DirectX 12 layer that will improve Multi GPU performance by reducing time spent in some DirectX function calls. 
 
Setup 
To enable Multi GPU, you must enable SLI (NVIDIA) or CrossFire (AMD) in your devices graphics control panel. 
 
NVIDIA Setup 
1. Open the NVIDIA Control Panel 
2. Select “Configure SLI, Surround, PhysX” from the “Select a Task…” list. 
3. Select the “Maximize 3D performance” radio button and apply the settings. 
 
AMD Setup 
1. Open the Radeon control panel. 
2. Select the “Gaming” tab. 
3. Toggle “AMD CrossFire” to On. 
 
AMD Note: If you’ve done the AMD Minimal Setup, you won’t have the AMD Radeon control center and CrossFire may be defaulted to off. You may need to install the Radeon software to enable CrossFire. 
 
Release Notes 

• To get the most out of Multi GPU, your game needs to be GPU bound (meaning the GPU is limiting you from higher framerates). You can check your performance using the in-game benchmark, which will tell you the percentage GPU bound the game is under load. If this number is 80+% than you should get some benefit from using multiple GPUs.
• Increasing the resolution of the game or increasing the quality of some of the settings is a good way to take advantage of the extra rendering power of the second GPU.
• The implementation of Multi GPU in Gears of War 4 requires constant synchronization of data between the two GPUs. Using 4K resolution and “Ultra” quality shadows may exceed the bandwidth available on the PCIe bus for synchronizing the two cards, causing stuttering or slowdown in the game.
• Only two GPUs will be utilized if SLI or CrossFire is enabled. Systems with more than two GPUs will not see additional gains.