Monster Hunter World has already been a huge success for Capcom on Xbox One and PS4, selling over eight million copies, but many are still waiting for the PC launch. At this point, it is well established that the PC version is going to be very demanding, particularly on the CPU.

Several press outlets already have their hands on the PC version, which is scheduled to release on the 9th of August. There are a few key things we know about the port so far: there is no ultrawide support, you can remove the FPS cap, textures/assets are on par with the console release.

Based on previews of the PC version so far, folks on Resetera began pointing towards CPU usage being the main culprit behind performance drops. This led to Capcom USA's VP of digital platforms, William Yagi-Bacon, to weigh in on the subject and explain why this game in particular is so resource heavy:

“To eliminate interstitial loading during active gameplay, MHW loads the entire level into memory. In addition to managing assets loaded into memory, it keeps track of monster interactions, health status, environment/object changes, manages LOD & object culling, calculates collision detection and physics simulation, and tons of other background telemetry stuff that you don't see yet requires CPU cycle. This is in addition to supporting any GPU rendering tasks.”

The engine itself is optimised for x86 CPUs and is highly scalable. The game should spread load well across multiple cores and threads, meaning those with a newer 8th Gen Intel CPUs or Ryzen 5/7 should be fine. However, those running something older might struggle at points.

Obviously, we are still in early days for the PC version of Monster Hunter World. The game doesn't release for nine more days and optimised drivers from Nvidia and AMD have yet to launch. With all of that in mind, we won't have a fully clear picture until everyone gets access on the 9th of August. For reference, you can find the game's minimum and recommended system requirements, HERE.

KitGuru Says: I'm really looking forward to Monster Hunter World on PC. However, I am a bit worried about the optimisation side of things. Unfortunately until the game comes out, we won't have a fully clear picture of what to expect on the performance front.

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