Game gear specs

Curved screen cover versus flat screen cover : Some Game Gear systems came with a front screen cover that was flat instead of rounded. This design does not effect the way the screens look and is purely an aesthetic difference. As soon as you power on these models, it immediately loads the game. Click on each image for full-sized versions:. First, AMD is promoting Gears 5. Gears 5 basically ticks off every bullet point except one: mods.

That's been the case since the first Gears of War and I don't expect it to change any time soon. Otherwise, the PC version has pretty much everything you need. You can play at any resolution, field of view adjustments are available, and the cutscenes are even in by default which means the sides either get cropped or you get letterboxing on a display, and there's a menu option that lets you choose.

And then there's the graphics settings list, which goes above and beyond anything else. I'll cover the settings below in more detail, but Gears 5 makes sure that even people who don't know what anisotropic filtering or anti-aliasing are can easily see what they do via its preview feature.

It's pretty cool and actually useful. The only real problem is potential information overload—25 different settings, plus some additional tweaks that don't really affect performance, but can change the way the game looks. Do you want standard bloom or anamorphic bloom? Do you even care? It's worth noting that Gears 5 will use your desktop resolution combined with screen scaling by default. If you have a 4K monitor but want to play at p for performance reasons, you're actually better off changing your desktop resolution to p and then launching the game—or you can even change the desktop resolution while playing and Gears 5 won't miss a beat, adjusting to the resolution.

All testing was done with the desktop resolution set to the desired rendering resolution. The official system requirements for Gears 5 are relatively tame, though no there's no specific mention of expected performance.

Based on my test results see below , I'd assume the minimum specs are for p low at a steady 30 fps, though you might even get closer to 60 fps. The recommended specs meanwhile look like they should be good for p medium at 60 fps, possibly even bumping up a few settings to high.

Finally, the ideal specs should handle p at ultra quality and still deliver 60 fps. Here are the system requirements:. The ideal specs do look pretty hefty, but based on my testing Gears 5 should be playable at 60 fps and high or ultra settings on quite a few GPUs.

Gears 5 will also work on Windows 7, provided you purchase the Steam version. The Steam page says Win7 is supported, while Microsoft says you need the latest version of Windows 10, specifically the May updated build or later, along with DirectX 12, but the MS requirements appear to be specifically for the Microsoft Store version.

MS ported most of DX12 to Windows 7 , and it's nice to see them supporting the older but still popular OS with this latest release. Gears 5 almost sets a new record for the number of graphics options. There are 25 main options, with another five or so tweaks e. That's a lot of settings to sift through, but Gears 5 wins major kudos for letting you preview how most of the settings affect the way the game looks. Not sure whether volumetric lighting should be turned up or down? Check out the preview.

It also suggests how much of an impact each setting can have on performance, though the estimates are a bit vague. What does that actually mean? I checked performance with each setting turned down to minimum using the RX and RTX and compared that to the ultra preset, which generated the above charts. That provides a more precise estimate of performance. Gears 5 includes a built-in benchmark that delivers generally consistent results, so the measured changes should be reasonably accurate within percent.

Because there are so many individual settings, I'm only going to cover the ones that cause the greatest change in performance at least 5 percent.

My baseline performance is using the ultra preset at p, and then dropping each setting to the minimum value.

You can refer to the above charts for the RX and RTX for the full test results, but here are the main highlights. Changing World Texture Detail to low can improve performance by up to 10 percent, but it can also make the world look a lot blurrier. Dropping a notch to high instead of ultra can still improve performance a few percent with very little change in image quality.

Dropping Texture Filtering to 2x can reduce performance by up to 7 percent, and in motion you probably wouldn't notice the difference between 2x and 16x anisotropic filtering. I'd try to keep these at high, or at least medium, unless your hardware is really struggling. Dynamic Shadow Quality is the single biggest impact on performance, and the low setting can boost performance by up to 26 percent, but each step down is very visible, and the low setting makes everything look flat.

Try to keep this at high or medium if possible. Turning off Ambient Occlusion can improve performance by percent, but also makes things look a bit flat. It's less noticeable than the drop in dynamic shadow quality, however. Setting Tessellation Quality to low can boost performance by up to 10 percent, but it removes a lot of detail from some surfaces. Holding it in a normal position will eventually result in not seeing anything.

You may also see ghost images and trails, or just plain fuzzy images. The power inputs seem to hold up better than the rest of the machine. There are two battery compartments on the back of the machine and each holds three AAs for a total of six to run the machine.

I have run into some loose AC input ports for plugging it into the wall. Also the covers for the battery packs can get lost. If you are buying one, make sure it comes with both! There is a power light located on the left side of the screen and below that to the left is the mono speaker. On the top of the machine we have a headphone jack, a volume control dial. Next to those is an extension port which is used for the Gear-to-Gear link cable, allowing two SEGA Game Gears with two copies of a game to play head-to-head.

There are two battery pack covers, one for each side. These guys are often missing from units and they are contured to each side, so if you look for a replacement make sure you get both sides as they are not interchangeable. On the bottom there are two clip areas that are used for the Game Gear Carrying Strap that came with the unit. Click image for game list and reviews. These little guys came in a cardboard box similar to the later SEGA Genesis boxes but about half the size.

You will more often than not find the games without the box and manual. Included with each game was a nice little plastic case that could hold one Game Gear game. These are great and could also make the game easier to store in carrying cases as it added some bulk to each game.

Plug this bad boy into your cartridge slot on the Game Gear and turn it into a portable over-the-air TV! And it actually worked pretty good! Still, the small screen with its limited resolution does make for a pretty low quality image.

All this is great but moot at this point.