Monster Hunter World releases today on PC and we’ve managed to get our hands on a pre-release copy to test the game on various hardware we have in the lab. A quick note, this isn’t a complete list of configurations. We’ll mostly be testing with NVIDIA graphics cards with an Intel Core i7-8700K. The reason for this is to demonstrate the maximum capacity that each card can deliver without CPU limitings its performance. We’ll also be doing a CPU performance analysis to see how the game behaves but it’ll serve mostly as a preview as we prepare to test the game with AMD Ryzen CPUs and other configurations after release.
Monster Hunter World for PC system requirements require at least a quad-core CPU and a GTX 660 or similar for minimum playable experience at low/1080p.
We’ve received multiple requests to particularly test the game with Volumetric Rendering disabled. We didn’t explore this at the time of writing as we focused on preset detail settings to easily find the scaling of how much each taxes the GPUs.
Test Setup
CPU: Core i7-8700K Cooler: Fractal Design Celsius S36 360mm AIO liquid cooler Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS GAMING 7 RAM: KINGMAX ZEUS DRAGON RGB DDR4-3200 16GB SSD: WD Blue 1TB SSD PSU: Seasonic Platinum P1000 GPUs: ZOTAC GTX 1080 Ti AMP, COLORFUL iGame GTX1080 Vulcan-X OC, NVIDIA GTX 1070 Ti reference, ASUS ROG STRIX GTX 1060 6GB OC, AMD Radeon RX480 Reference, ZOTAC GTX 1050 Ti single fan, ZOTAC GTX 750 Ti
Note that these drivers don’t offer optimization for the game yet and we will test after launch to see if there is any significant improvement. If we find driver optimizations is significantly great, we will update all our results to reflect it.
All tests were done during the opening area of the game after reaching HR2 to do Explorations. Tests were done on Ancient Forest Area 1.
GPU Performance – Graphics Detail Presets
Resolution Scaling – GTX 1080 Ti
This test aims to show you how much resolution impacts the game with a GTX 1080 Ti with all settings set to maximum.
CPU Scaling Comparison
As the game requires a quad-core, we decided to test that and see how much CPU affects GPU performance across various contemporary graphics cards. As you can see in the charts below, only with a relatively faster card does a better CPU help but in most mainstream systems running quad-core CPUs, there’s little to no impact. We will expand this section after release when we get to test with AMD Ryzen procs and dual-cores.
Lowest of the Low – Monster Hunter World Benchmarked on a GTX 750 Ti
In this video, we benchmarked the game with the GTX 750 Ti, a similar card to the minimum recommended GPU for Monster Hunter World, the GTX 660. In this video, set the settings to Low which is the lowest possible you can go in-game in terms of detail settings. Paired with a decent quad-core processor, the Core i3-8100, the GTX 750 Ti proves it is still quite capable to play this game even in 1080p.
You can watch the rest of our benchmark videos for the graphics cards we tested above including a maxed out 4K resolution testing with GTX 1080 Ti in this video playlist:
Conclusion
This test is far from complete and we’ll improve the charts as we progress through all our parts and testing including the highly requested volumetric rendering comparison. Focusing more on the game, this is the first main series Monster Hunter title on PC and it is one of the most successful release to date from the franchise. Capcom has managed to create a definitive experience with this version and PC gamers can now enjoy something a bit more different than just FPS, MOBA and Battle Royale grinding. Monster Hunter World introduces its unique blend of action and RPG in a beautiful setting that is just waiting to be explored. The game’s dynamic nature means there’s limitless possibilities on your next hunt will go and Capcom’s free update policy promises free content as long as they can keep pumping them out.
Talking about performance, right off the bat we can say this is a very demanding game on PC when settings are cranked up to high. Even with a GTX 1080 Ti, we can barely touch 144FPS range so those gunning to max those 144hz monitors may want to go dual-GPUs for this one. But from the videos, you can see that despite grinding to just 30FPS, the game is quite playable and its gameplay lends itself nicely to this framerate. Opinions are split about the optimization of the game but at the end of the day, those looking to run the game as smooth as they possibly can without sacrificing much eye candy can settle for Mid settings which looks visually similar to High but with some effects disabled. Performance improvements range are quite noteworthy by doing this and this is something that some midrange systems can explore if they want a smoother onscreen experience.
Please look forward to further updates to this analysis. As for Monster Hunter World itself, its a definite recommendation for those looking to enjoy some RPG after the long drought in PC game releases.
You negate to mention the setting used with regards to the games Dynamic Resolution option. Using the default preset setitng for this option can TOTALY invalidate any performance figures as it can lower rendering resolution to increase FPS, this is especialy true for any hardware that cannot maintain over 60 FPS with this setitng disabled.
Disabling the setting (setting to High) ensures the game stays at the resolution chosen. This combined with a 60 FPS target (or no limit) has a MASSIVE impact on performance and shows up the games poor optimsation.
You must be talking about Resolution Scaling and its Prioritize Framerate/Prioritize Resolution setting? That’s something I’m still looking into but by default, Max settings sets it to high and Low sets it to Low. Mid and High sets it a prioritize resolution. All my tests were done with FPS limit disabled. Thanks for the insight.
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You negate to mention the setting used with regards to the games Dynamic Resolution option. Using the default preset setitng for this option can TOTALY invalidate any performance figures as it can lower rendering resolution to increase FPS, this is especialy true for any hardware that cannot maintain over 60 FPS with this setitng disabled.
Disabling the setting (setting to High) ensures the game stays at the resolution chosen. This combined with a 60 FPS target (or no limit) has a MASSIVE impact on performance and shows up the games poor optimsation.
You must be talking about Resolution Scaling and its Prioritize Framerate/Prioritize Resolution setting? That’s something I’m still looking into but by default, Max settings sets it to high and Low sets it to Low. Mid and High sets it a prioritize resolution. All my tests were done with FPS limit disabled. Thanks for the insight.
Is there any chance that monster hunter world can work in i3(8th gen) Nvidia 940MX with 1tb ssd with 4gb of ram?
Jasper Castillo
Well, it might run, but I think that 4GB of RAM could end up being a bottleneck. Get another 4GB of RAM and I think you’d definitely be fine.
Sorry my comment above was meant to be a reply to ChopperXYZ, I’m not sure what happened.