Technical State of Monster Hunter Wilds on PC is Catastrophic

Capcom's latest release is a chart-topper, currently ranking 6th on Steam's most played games. However, this success is overshadowed by widespread criticism of its technical performance on PC. Digital Foundry's in-depth analysis reveals a troubling picture.

Their findings highlight significant performance issues. Shader pre-compilation, a crucial process, takes an agonizing 9 minutes on a high-end 9800X3D system, stretching to over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Even on "High" settings, texture quality is disappointingly low. Testing with an RTX 4060 at 1440p with balanced DLSS reveals substantial frame time spikes. Surprisingly, even the more powerful RTX 4070 (12GB) struggles, producing noticeably poor textures.

For GPUs with 8GB of VRAM, Digital Foundry recommends reducing texture quality to "Medium" to alleviate stuttering and frame time spikes. Yet, even this compromise results in subpar visuals. Rapid camera movements continue to cause noticeable frame drops, although less severe with slower movements. Critically, the frame time issues persist regardless of texture quality.

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 resulting in jarring frame time spikes. He advises against purchasing the game for systems with 8GB GPUs and expresses reservations even about more powerful cards like the RTX 4070.

Intel GPU users face particularly poor performance. The Arc 770, for example, manages only 15-20 frames per second, further plagued by missing textures and visual artifacts. While high-end systems can partially mitigate these problems, smooth gameplay remains elusive. Currently, optimizing settings without significant visual compromises proves nearly impossible.