"Monster Hunter Wilds PC Performance in Crisis"

Capcom's latest release has achieved significant online success, currently ranking 6th among Steam's most-played titles. However, the game has drawn substantial criticism from users due to its substandard technical performance. Digital Foundry's thorough analysis of the PC version has further validated these concerns, presenting disheartening findings.

The analysis reveals that the game encounters multiple technical difficulties. Shader pre-compilation, for instance, takes approximately 9 minutes on a system equipped with a 9800X3D processor, and over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Even when set to "High" graphics settings, the texture quality remains disappointingly low. On a PC with an RTX 4060, configured at "High" settings and 1440p resolution with balanced DLSS, there are notable frame time spikes. Similarly, the more powerful RTX 4070 with 12 GB of memory struggles to deliver satisfactory texture quality.

For users with GPUs possessing 8 GB of memory, Digital Foundry recommends reducing texture quality to "Medium" to alleviate stuttering and frame time spikes. Despite this adjustment, the visual quality remains subpar. Quick camera movements exacerbate the issue, though slower movements mitigate it to some extent. Even with lower texture settings, frame time problems persist.

Alex Battaglia from Digital Foundry attributes these issues primarily to inefficient data streaming, which places an undue burden on the GPU during decompression. This is especially problematic for budget graphics cards, resulting in severe frame time spikes. Consequently, Battaglia advises against purchasing the game for those with 8 GB GPUs and expresses reservations about its performance even on more robust systems like the RTX 4070.

The game's performance is particularly dismal on Intel GPUs. The Arc 770, for example, manages only 15–20 frames per second, alongside issues like missing textures and other visual artifacts. While high-performance systems can somewhat mitigate these problems, the game still fails to run smoothly consistently. At present, finding optimized settings that do not compromise visual quality significantly is nearly impossible.