Technical State of Monster Hunter Wilds on PC is Catastrophic

Capcom's latest release is a chart-topper, currently ranking 6th among Steam's most played games. However, its impressive player count is overshadowed by widespread criticism regarding its technical performance on PC. Digital Foundry's in-depth analysis confirms these concerns, revealing a troubling picture for PC players.

Their findings highlight numerous performance issues. Shader pre-compilation, a crucial process, takes an unacceptable 9 minutes on a high-end 9800X3D system, stretching to over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Texture quality is disappointingly low, even at the "High" setting. Tests on an RTX 4060 at 1440p with balanced DLSS showed significant frame time spikes, a jarring experience for players. Even the more powerful RTX 4070 struggles, producing surprisingly poor texture quality.

For GPUs with only 8GB of VRAM, Digital Foundry recommends reducing texture quality to "Medium" to minimize stuttering. Even with this compromise, visual fidelity remains suboptimal. Rapid camera movements cause noticeable frame drops, although these are less severe with slower movements. Crucially, the underlying frame time issues persist regardless of texture settings.

Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia points to inefficient data streaming as the likely culprit. This puts excessive strain on the GPU during decompression, particularly impacting budget graphics cards and leading to severe frame time spikes. He advises against playing the game on 8GB GPUs and expresses reservations even about higher-end cards like the RTX 4070.

Performance is particularly abysmal on Intel GPUs. The Arc 770, for instance, manages only 15-20 frames per second, further marred by missing textures and other visual glitches. While high-end systems can partially mitigate some issues, a consistently smooth experience remains elusive. Currently, finding optimal settings proves nearly impossible without sacrificing significant visual quality.