Monster Hunter Rise PC: A Technical Disaster

Capcom's latest release is a chart-topper, currently ranking 6th among Steam's most played games. However, this success is overshadowed by widespread criticism of its technical performance on PC. Digital Foundry's in-depth analysis confirms these concerns, revealing a deeply flawed PC port.

Their findings highlight numerous problems. Shader pre-compilation, for instance, takes an agonizing 9 minutes on a high-end 9800X3D system, stretching to over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Texture quality is disappointingly low, even at "High" settings. Testing on an RTX 4060 at 1440p with balanced DLSS revealed significant frame time spikes, a problem that persists even on a more powerful RTX 4070, which still renders subpar textures.

8GB GPUs are particularly affected. Digital Foundry recommends reducing texture quality to "Medium" to alleviate stuttering and frame time spikes, but even this compromise results in unsatisfactory visuals. Rapid camera movements exacerbate these issues, though slower movements show some improvement. Critically, the frame time problems remain even with low-quality textures.

Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia points to inefficient data streaming as the likely culprit, placing excessive load on the GPU during decompression. This is especially problematic for budget GPUs, leading to severe frame time spikes. He strongly advises against purchasing the game if you own an 8GB GPU and expresses reservations even about higher-end cards like the RTX 4070.

Intel GPUs fare even worse. The Arc 770, for example, struggles to maintain 15-20 frames per second, further hampered by missing textures and visual artifacts. While high-end systems can partially mitigate these issues, smooth performance remains elusive. Currently, finding optimal settings is nearly impossible without sacrificing significant visual fidelity.