Monster Hunter Wilds PC Technical Issues: A Disaster

Capcom's latest release has surged to the 6th spot among Steam's most-played titles, yet it faces significant backlash from users due to its technical shortcomings. Digital Foundry's thorough analysis of the PC version further validates these concerns, revealing a host of issues that mar the gaming experience.

One of the most glaring problems is the lengthy shader pre-compilation process, which 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 at 1440p resolution using balanced DLSS, players encounter significant frame time spikes. The situation doesn't improve much with the more powerful RTX 4070 with 12 GB of memory, as textures still appear substandard.

For those with GPUs featuring 8 GB of memory, Digital Foundry recommends dropping the texture quality to "Medium" to reduce stuttering and frame time spikes. However, this compromise does little to improve the visual quality, which remains unsatisfactory. Rapid camera movements exacerbate these issues, though slower movements mitigate them to some extent. Even with lower texture settings, the frame time problems persist.

Alex Battaglia of Digital Foundry points to data streaming as the primary culprit behind these issues, as it places an excessive load on the GPU during decompression. This is especially problematic for 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 powerful setups like the RTX 4070.

The game's performance is particularly dismal on Intel GPUs. The Arc 770, for instance, struggles to deliver between 15–20 frames per second, accompanied by missing textures and other visual artifacts. While high-performance systems can partially alleviate these issues, the game still fails to run smoothly. At present, finding an optimized settings configuration is nearly impossible, as any adjustments result in a significant loss of visual quality.