Technical State of Monster Hunter Wilds on PC is Catastrophic
Capcom's latest title, despite achieving impressive online player numbers (currently ranking 6th on Steam's most-played list), is facing heavy criticism due to significant technical flaws. Digital Foundry's in-depth analysis of the PC version confirms these issues, revealing a suboptimal gaming experience.
Their findings highlight several key problems. Shader pre-compilation times are excessively long, ranging from approximately 9 minutes on a high-end 9800X3D system to over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Texture quality is disappointing, even at the "High" setting. Significant frame-time spikes are evident even on an RTX 4060 at 1440p with balanced DLSS, and texture quality remains poor even on a more powerful RTX 4070 (12GB).
For GPUs with 8GB of VRAM, reducing texture quality to "Medium" is advised to alleviate stuttering and frame-time spikes, but visual fidelity remains underwhelming. Rapid camera movements still produce noticeable spikes, though less severe with slower movements. Crucially, the frame-time issues persist regardless of texture settings.
Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia points to inefficient data streaming as the likely culprit, placing excessive strain on the GPU during decompression. This is particularly detrimental to budget GPUs, causing pronounced frame-time spikes. He discourages 8GB GPU users from playing and expresses reservations even about more powerful cards like the RTX 4070.
Performance is especially poor on Intel GPUs, with the Arc 770 delivering only 15-20 frames per second, accompanied by missing textures and other visual artifacts. While high-end systems can partially mitigate these issues, consistent smooth gameplay remains elusive. Optimizing settings without substantial visual compromise currently proves nearly impossible.
