Monster Hunter: World – PC Graphics Settings Guide | ViCadia (2023)

Monster Hunter: Worldis an action role-playing game developed and published by Capcom. It is the latest installment in a 16-year series that revolves around killing or capturing wild monsters in different landscapes.BumpIt is also the first in the series to be released for the PC platform. In addition to the introduction of many new game mechanics,Monster Hunter: WorldIt also represents the biggest visual improvement in the series, as it includes several new graphical enhancements. In this article we will examine the performance ofMonster Hunter: Worldon the PC platform and make suggestions for the best graphics settings for your graphics card.

Monster Hunter: Worldit is powered by a legacy MT Framework engine developed internally by Capcom. It's the same engine that powered older Capcom titles likeLost Planet: Extreme Conditionsmilost planet 2,Devil May Cry 4, Resident Evil 5miThe Dragon's Belief. The engine supports features such as tessellation, displacement mapping, soft body simulation, wave simulation, delayed lightning, SSAO, and HDR.

Generally,Monster Hunter: WorldIt has large open world areas that are richly designed and offer many aspects to interact with. Essentially,BumpGraphically it is not a very demanding title. However, running it at maximum image quality will significantly reduce the overall frame rate, so don't set your expectations too high. To test gaming performance on Tier 4 graphics cards, we used our standard benchmark PC platform with the Radeon RX 580 graphics card and the following components:

Test Platform Specifications

To measure how many frames per second our system can achieve with certain settings, we use the MSI Afterburner tool (version 4.6.1) and RivaTuner Statistics Server (version 7.2.2). FromMonster Hunter: WorldIt doesn't have a built-in benchmark tool, our benchmark test consisted of running the same random sequence for 60 seconds and then logging the data using the programs above. We've limited our graphics performance analysis to 1080p resolution, as it's still the most popular display resolution, but we've included data showing resolution scaling up to 4K with all graphics settings set to maximum.

If you don't like to play with different graphics settings,Monster Hunter: Worldoffers four presets to choose from: Low, Medium, High, and Loudest. Here are the results of our frame rate tests for each of the presets above:

Generally,Monster Hunter: WorldIt's not a very taxing title for tier 4 graphics cards, but pushing all graphics settings to max puts a lot of strain on those graphics cards, so don't expect frame rates to hit the 60fps mark. Playing the game on high settings provides a comfortable and fairly stable experience that is not much different from playing on the highest settings. The low 1% is a bit overwhelming on the high preset. So if you expect solid 60fps performance, go for the medium preset.

In December 2019, Capcom released an update forMonster Hunter: Worldwhich introduced the DirectX 12 API to the game. In our opinion, this was great news as the DirectX 12 API works better than DirectX 11 on newer graphics cards. This update also introduced some new graphics options that we will discuss later. In short, DirectX 12 debuted in December 2019 for theMonster Hunter: World, so we also tested the overall performance of graphics presets that run with this API. Here are the results:

As you can see, without hardware costs, DirectX 12 offers significantly better performance than DirectX 11. On average, we're talking about a 6% to 10% FPS increase, or in absolute terms an average of +4 to +10 FPS . Running the game on the highest settings won't get you any closer to the 60fps mark, but playing the game on the high preset will be a much more stable experience overall. Please note that our low 1% results with DirectX 12 were much better than the same results based on DirectX 11 API. In this regard, it is highly recommended to play this game with the latest API as it offers a much better graphics performance overall and doesn't bring any new glitches you might fear. You can see our direct comparison chart between DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 performance at the end (jump to 2:59) of our video here:

After looking at the general image quality presets, we checked all the graphics settings inMonster Hunter: Worldand evaluating its impact on overall system performance. This testing phase consisted of running the game on the Ultra preset, but with all image quality settings turned off or all the way down. After getting the results with each of the settings turned off, we were able to compare them with the results while they were turned on. This gave us the ability to determine the performance impact of each of the graphics settings on the overall frame rate. As a base, we use the Ultra quality preset (which runs on the DirectX 11 API). Here are the results:

As we did our benchmark test beforeMonster Hunter: WorldAfter receiving the DirectX 12 update, our test results did not include the results of the new graphics options that were added to the game along with the new API. These settings are Snow Quality, Pod AO, and Contact Shadow. We did some preliminary testing before writing this text and then concluded that these options do not affect overall performance. These are just a few post processing effects added to the game.Monsterjager: IceborneExtension that adds some image fidelity effects in snowy environments. In this sense, we consider them irrelevant. Regarding the "Vanilla" setting, you can see from the table above that most of the settings have very little impact on system performance. The picture becomes clearer if we look at this graph here:

The image quality setting clearly has the biggest impact on system performance because it does what it says on the tin: it adjusts the overall fidelity of the image. Since this setting pretty much changes the entire game, we highly recommend running the game with this option set to maximum. The next option that has the biggest impact on performance is Volume Rendering Quality. Well, this setting seems to have a huge performance hit without doing anything particularly useful. This setting adds fog to the game, which we think looks bad and makes all texture colors look washed out. Also, it really kills performance. So if you don't find it essential, just turn it off, you'll have a much higher overall FPS. Another setting that affects performance is the LOD bias, or distance bias level. Running this setting to maximum significantly improves image fidelity by allowing you to locate other objects from a greater distance. However, this will place a heavy load on the GPU as it will be forced to render distant objects. If you have a powerful card, we think you should keep this setting to maximum, but if you have a level 4 graphics card, set it to Variable. It won't degrade the image quality too much (provides an experience similar to gaming on PlayStation 4) and will stabilize the frame rate significantly.

Other settings can be lowered (if you have a weaker GPU), but we don't think it's necessary, especially if you have a Tier 4 graphics card. Lower Volume Playback Quality and set LOD Bias to variable while keeping all others settings like Ultra made our Radeon RX 580 quite happy. We easily averaged between 60 and 80 FPS, which we think is great performance at 1080p resolution.

If you plan on playing this game at resolutions higher than 1080p, then expect huge performance hits.Monster Hunter: Worldit looks very picky and not even optimized at higher resolutions. Here are our results for running this game at 1440p and 4K resolutions at maximum settings:

The Radeon RX 580 manages to squeeze an average of 30 FPS at 1440P, but it disappears entirely at 4K. That's to be expected though, as running this game on max settings at 4K and 60 FPS is likely reserved for RTX 2080 or RX 5700 XT card owners only. If you have a FreeSync or G-Sync monitor, you can probably get good results at 1440p with level 4 graphics cards by turning most settings down to medium or low. However, we do not recommend playing this game with these GPUs at resolutions higher than 1080p.

Conclude,Monster Hunter: Worldit offers nice but unimpressive graphics. Vanilla textures lack detail, so we recommend downloading a high-resolution texture pack from Capcom. The game offers pretty solid performance on Tier 4 graphics cards, and with a few tweaks, it can average over 60 FPS. To play games with resolutions higher than 1080P, we recommend using Tier 2 and Tier 1 graphics cards.

See more information

• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: Radeon RX 580 PC Graphics Settings Guide
• Best RTX 2060 Graphics Cards - Ultimate Buyer's Guide
• The best old PC games to play in spring 2020