Monster Hunter Wilds PC Performance Disastrous

Capcom's latest release has made waves by securing the 6th spot among Steam's most-played titles, yet it faces significant backlash from the gaming community due to its substandard technical performance. Digital Foundry's comprehensive analysis of the PC version has highlighted a series of troubling issues that have left players disappointed.

One of the most glaring problems is the lengthy shader pre-compilation process, which takes approximately 9 minutes on a high-end system equipped with a 9800X3D processor, and over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Additionally, the game's texture quality falls short of expectations, even when set to "High." On a PC with an RTX 4060 running at 1440p resolution with "High" settings and balanced DLSS, users experience significant frame time spikes. These issues persist even on more powerful hardware like the RTX 4070 with 12 GB of memory, where textures still appear notably poor.

For gamers using GPUs with 8 GB of memory, Digital Foundry recommends dropping the texture quality to "Medium" to reduce stuttering and frame time spikes. However, this compromise does not fully resolve the visual quality issues. Rapid camera movements continue to cause noticeable spikes, though these are somewhat mitigated with slower movements. Even with lower texture settings, frame time problems remain a persistent issue.

Alex Battaglia of Digital Foundry points to data streaming as the core of the problem, causing excessive GPU load during decompression. This is particularly detrimental for users with budget graphics cards, resulting in sharp frame time spikes. Battaglia advises against purchasing the game for those with 8 GB GPUs and expresses reservations about its suitability even for more robust systems like the RTX 4070.

The game's performance is particularly dismal on Intel GPUs, such as the Arc 770, which struggles to deliver a mere 15–20 frames per second, alongside missing textures and other visual artifacts. While high-performance systems can partially alleviate these issues, the game still fails to run smoothly consistently. At present, finding an optimal settings configuration proves challenging, as it often results in a substantial loss of visual quality.

In summary, despite its popularity on Steam, Capcom's new release is marred by severe technical flaws that significantly detract from the gaming experience, as evidenced by Digital Foundry's detailed analysis.