Monster Hunter Wilds has made its debut on PC, but the experience has proven to be a perplexing one, particularly for users with lower-end graphics cards. The performance issues are significant enough that a recommendation for these systems is difficult to justify. This assessment, while stern, is rooted in the game’s considerable performance challenges that demand urgent attention.
Initial Impressions and Performance Hurdles
Interestingly, the initial impressions of Monster Hunter Wilds on PC were relatively positive. Upon first launch, players encounter a lengthy shader compilation process, which can take around six minutes on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and over 13 minutes on a Ryzen 5 3600. The graphical settings menu is well-crafted, offering detailed options, a VRAM meter, and component-specific performance implications, along with preview images for various settings.
However, some peculiarities arise. A pop-up prompts users to enable frame generation before the game even begins, a suggestion that seems misplaced for low-end machines where such a feature is not recommended by either AMD or Nvidia. If players choose to decline this option, the game reassures them that they can activate it later in the settings menu, which casts a shadow over the potential performance of the game.
After navigating through the initial prompts, I opted for the default settings detected by the game, setting DLSS to balanced mode at 1440p on the RTX 4060. Unfortunately, the experience was marred by issues reminiscent of older gaming eras, with PS3-level texture quality appearing in numerous scenes. Textures often seemed to load incorrectly; for instance, a character’s white coat displayed a jarring mosaic of colors due to inadequate texture compression.
Once in control of the character following the introductory cutscenes, noticeable stutters accompanied each camera turn. Such stuttering is typically linked to the streaming of textures into VRAM, yet the VRAM meter indicated satisfactory performance, leaving casual users without a clear understanding of the underlying issues. Adjusting the texture setting from high to medium alleviated the stutter on the RTX 4060 8GB, but similar texture quality concerns persisted on the RTX 4070 12GB. Additionally, while higher-end GPU users can download “highest” quality textures as separate DLC, this option was unavailable during our pre-release testing.
With medium textures enabled on the RTX 4060, the performance still fell short of expectations. The texture quality resembled that of early 2000s games, and frame rates continued to fluctuate, particularly when standing still and turning the camera. A gradual camera turn did yield smoother frame rates, but this peculiar performance characteristic was unexpected, especially in a seemingly barren desert environment.
Such behavior has been observed in other games suffering from occlusion culling issues on slower CPUs, yet the Ryzen 7 9800X3D should not be experiencing these problems. The observed performance issues could stem from the game’s aggressive texture streaming and decompression processes, particularly affecting lower-end graphics cards like the RTX 4060.
While this remains speculative, the evidence suggests that users with graphics cards featuring 8GB of VRAM or less should approach Monster Hunter Wilds with caution. The choice between high textures that induce stutters and medium textures that appear even worse is not one that can be recommended. Similar performance issues were noted on the RTX 2070 Super, RX 5700, and Arc A770, with Intel’s GPU performing particularly poorly, averaging around 20fps with non-loading textures.
For those using higher-end GPUs, caution is still advised. During gameplay on the RTX 4070, consistent stuttering was observed even with high texture settings. This raises concerns about the potential for worsened performance when higher-resolution texture packs are installed. Measurements indicate that the stutters are likely not due to VRAM limitations but may be related to constant streaming and real-time decompression processes.
In summary, the disparity between the graphical fidelity and the performance delivered by Monster Hunter Wilds is striking. The underwhelming performance in a largely featureless desert environment raises questions about the optimization of the game across various hardware configurations. For now, it is prudent for users with lower-end graphics cards to steer clear of Monster Hunter Wilds until these issues are addressed, while those with more powerful hardware may still find the experience lacking in polish and performance.
