Monster Hunter: World PC Performance Review

Even with our customised/optimised graphical settings, which we discussed on page 6, it is obvious that Monster Hunter: World remains an extremely demanding title on PC, requiring either a Nvidia GTX 1070 or a Radeon RX Vega 56 to achieve steady 60+ FPS framerates at 1080p. 

With further settings adjustments, both our RX 580 and GTX 1060 graphics cards can achieve steady 60+ FPS framerates at 1080p, but not without visual sacrifices. This could be done using a variety of graphical changes, from reductions in shadow quality and ambient occlusion quality to more extreme measures such as resolution scaling tweaks and LOD bias adjustments.

Moving down to our GTX 960 and R9 380 graphics cards, settings changes will be required to allow both cards to offer stable 30+ FPS gameplay. Both cards can easily play Monster Hunter: World at 1080p 30FPS with a few tweaks, though a 30FPS experience on PC will be a difficult pill to swallow for some users, especially if they use a keyboard/mouse setup over a gamepad, which is typically more forgiving at low framerates.  

When looking at our two test areas, we can see a trend across AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, something that is highlighted with the Radeon RX Vega 56. We can see that in both test areas that the RX Vega 56 surpasses the GTX 1070 when it comes to average framerate, but we can also see that in our second scene that the RX Vega 56’s minimum framerate can dip below the GTX 1070’s minimum. This reveals the scene dependancy of AMD VS Nvidia performance, making neither brand a clear-cut winner over the other. 

Given the hardware demands of Monster Hunter: World PC gamers need to temper their visuals expectations when using older, or lower end hardware to play this title. Graphical settings will need to be compromised to achieve 60FPS framerates, though it also must be remembered that Monster Hunter’s highest LOD settings are reserved only for the game’s “graphics mode” on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.