Monster Hunter: World PC Performance Review

Resolution Scaling – The performance Impact

Resolution Scaling is a rare setting in modern PC games, despite the feature’s use in most modern AAA console releases. Sadly, Monster Hunter: World’s implementation of this features leaves several key details missing from the picture, such as the exact pixel counts/scales of the title’s Low, Mid and High options. 

We know that the game’s High option represents 100% scaling, displaying Monster Hunter: World at the user’s chosen resolution. The game’s Medium setting sits around the 90% scaling (on each axis) ball-park, with the Low setting sitting somewhere in the region of 75%. At 1080p, Monster Hunter: World’s Mid Resolution Scaling option would display the game at roughly 972p and play the game at approximately 810p at Low. 

The performance changes seen below are representative of these resolution changes, with Low Resolution Scaling allowing our GTX 1080 to run at an almost steady 60+ FPS when using the game’s highest settings. These performance levels are almost identical to running the game at a native 1080p, which makes sense given the fact that 1080p is 75% of 1440p on the horizontal and vertical axis.  

We can also see below that Monster Hunter’s Variable (Prioritise Resolution) setting has a minimal impact on performance, making the setting practically pointless. The Variable (Prioritise Framerate) option, on the other hand, does a great job ensuring that Monster Hunter: World runs at around 60 FPS on most occasions. In this case, our GTX 1080 can be scaled to resolutions that are below 1080p to get 60+FPS framerates, so we would only recommend using this setting when you want to resolve minor dips below 60FPS, as otherwise, the resolution variance can be extremely noticeable in gameplay.