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, this success is overshadowed by widespread criticism targeting its technical performance on PC. Digital Foundry's in-depth analysis confirms these concerns, revealing a deeply problematic PC port.

Their findings highlight several critical issues. Shader pre-compilation times are excessively long, ranging from 9 minutes on a 9800X3D system to over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Texture quality is disappointingly low, even at the "High" setting. Significant frame time spikes plague gameplay, even on an RTX 4060 at 1440p with balanced DLSS. Surprisingly, even the more powerful RTX 4070 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. However, visual quality remains suboptimal even with this compromise. Rapid camera movements exacerbate these issues, though slower movements show some improvement. Critically, the frame time problems persist regardless of texture settings.

Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia points to inefficient data streaming as the likely culprit, placing undue strain on the GPU during decompression. This is especially detrimental to budget GPUs, resulting in severe frame time spikes. He advises against purchasing the game for systems with 8GB GPUs and expresses reservations even about higher-end cards like the RTX 4070.

Intel GPUs fare particularly poorly. The Arc 770, for example, struggles to maintain a playable framerate, delivering only 15-20 FPS alongside missing textures and other visual artifacts. While high-end systems can partially mitigate these issues, smooth performance remains elusive. Currently, optimizing settings without significant visual compromise proves nearly impossible.