"Monster Hunter Wilds PC Technical Issues Cause Chaos"

Capcom's latest release has been making waves by securing the 6th spot in Steam's most-played titles, yet it has not escaped the scrutiny of its user base and technical analysts. Players have been vocal about their dissatisfaction with the game's rating on Valve's platform, primarily due to its substandard technical performance. Digital Foundry's thorough examination of the PC version has further highlighted the game's shortcomings, leading to unfavorable reviews.

Digital Foundry's analysis reveals a host of issues plaguing the game. One significant problem 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. Additionally, the game's texture quality falls short of expectations, even when set to "High" graphics settings. On a PC with an RTX 4060, configured to "High" settings at 1440p resolution with balanced DLSS, the game experiences notable frame time spikes. The situation does not improve significantly with the more powerful RTX 4070, which has 12 GB of memory; textures still appear markedly inferior.

For users with GPUs that have 8 GB of memory, Digital Foundry recommends reducing texture quality to "Medium" to alleviate stuttering and frame time spikes. However, this compromise does not fully resolve the visual quality issues. Quick camera movements continue to cause noticeable spikes, though these are less severe with slower camera movements. Even with lower texture settings, the persistent frame time issues remain a concern.

Alex Battaglia of Digital Foundry points to data streaming as the primary culprit behind these problems, which places an excessive burden on the GPU during decompression. This issue is particularly acute for budget graphics cards, resulting in sharp frame time spikes. Consequently, Battaglia advises against purchasing the game for those with 8 GB GPUs and expresses reservations about its performance on more powerful setups like the RTX 4070.

The game's performance is especially dismal on Intel GPUs. For instance, the Arc 770 struggles to deliver a mere 15–20 frames per second, accompanied by missing textures and other visual artifacts. While high-performance systems can somewhat mitigate these issues, the game still fails to run smoothly across the board. At present, finding optimized settings is a challenging task, as any adjustments lead to a substantial loss in visual quality.