Monster Hunter Wilds - Performance Megathread

[u/QuintonFlynn]

FAQ:
"How will my computer perform?" See here

AMD users experiencing low poly textures/incorrect character/weapon/monster models

Links (One of these links may answer your question):
1. Mod fixes stutters caused by the anti-tamper tech
2. Low graphics mod
3. Get more performance for free
4. Turn off volumetric fog
5. PC settings for fidelity
6. AMD driver performance boost. Driver 25.2.1 vs Driver 24.12.1
7. Benchmark Megathread
8. Benchmark spreadsheet
9. Enable the Nvidia sharpness filter
10. High res texture pack
11. PSA: The High-Resolution Texture Pack contributes to stutter
12. WILDS Reshade - Subtle Ehancements
13. Replace the old build of DirectStorage (v1.1.0)
14. 6% uplift by disabling VBS
15. Enable resizable bar
16. Fix grainy effect
17. Fix AMD GPU texture flickering
18. PC Optimization Guide
19. Wilds Performance Optimization / Modding March 2025

Originally posted by Sononeo:
Interestingly I found that changing these two lines actually helped me a lot with performance.
ParallelBuildProcessorCount=16 RenderWorkerThreadPriorityAboveNormal=Enable

Rock textures flickering:

Example of flickering
I'm using a 7800XT and 7800X3D 1. Boot into safe mode
2. Run DDU (uninstalled gpu drivers)
3. Restart
4. Install latest AMD beta drivers
5. Now it's fixed

Recommended Settings:

• Upscaling mode: DLSS Quality - Depend if you want some more perf, use Balanced give like almost 6-10% more perf. AND UPGRADE TO DLSS4 (v310) IS A MUST, IT LOOKS CLEANER THAN EVEN NATIVE 1080p TAA. Balanced actually look very close to Quality with >DLSS4 too, there are some artifacts compare to native but really hard to notice them. (Just google the way, it's very simple to force update). Without DLSS I would recommend upgrade your FSR to FSR4 when it available, or try the newest XESS 2 which way better than the one in the game. -> Ray Tracing: OFF - actually it's usable, RT in this game only affect reflections with like 3 overall fps drop in my test, the thing is it takes a lot of VRAM
• Texture Quality: >High (or medium) - high to medium gives me like 1 more average fps, noticeably worse texture details, on high my vram almost always near it's limit (5.5-5.7gb), medium more manageable (4.4-5.1gb) in case there need more vram overhead
• Texture Filtering: Medium (ANISO x4) - make textures look cleaner when viewing from certain angles, in main menu, highest take 3 fps hit (of 70 fps), medium only about 1fps, no noticeable fps hit in-game.
• Mesh Quality: High (or medium) - drop to medium give slightly better perf and use less vram, but reduce some polygons, noticable on some model details, like NPC hair strands less smooth, some round objects noticeably less polygons...
• Fur Quality: Low - Seem barely improve fur quality at all so just leave it at low
• Sky/Cloud Quality: Lowest - This setting seem doesn't do anything, no visual or perf impact, but if the gpu/vram indicator in the demonstration is true then it should be turned down.
• Grass/Tree Quality: .Low - grasses look BETTER at Low, with shorter, less grass density = less shimmering and more ground details can be shown, easier to find small endemic life too. Hardly noticeable changes on the trees. Almost no performance difference between low and high.
• Grass/Tree Sway: Enable - make them more lively, barely performance increase not worth disable it
• Sand/Snow Quality: Lowest - It looks fine and who cares about pebbles slightly more realistic anyway. .- Water Effects: Enable - Couldn't spot any differences, assuming this affect water physics stuff, will need to test again with more water.
• Render Distance: Medium - you'll notice the choppy animation with far away creatures with this on low, seem zero performance hit and should keep it on.
• Shadow Quality: High - it does take some vram but not demanding at all, High vs Medium have THE SAME performance while Low look absolutely horrible and should be avoided.
• Distant Shadow Quality: Low - I don't notice a lot performance impact or visual changes but lower this reduce like 100mb vram usage
• Shadow Distance: Far - seem no performance hit, just leave it medium or far.
• Ambient Light Quality: Low - TURN THIS SHT DOWN, seem like zero difference (perhaps slightly brighter rocks?) for A LOT VRAM hog
• Contact Shadows: Enable - honestly I don't notice particular areas where this setting affect or performance hit, but from the demonstration pic should leave it on for some fine shadow details.
• Ambient Occlusion: Medium - small perf hit, add some details to shadows kinda like contact shadows, no noticeable visual or performance changes from medium to high, some may prefer it off as it can create some smeary shadow on ground around character
• Bloom: High - Personal preference, almost no perf impact
• Motion Blur: OFF - Less blur the better
• Vignette Effects: OFF - personal preference, no perf impact
• Screen Space Reflection: On - add reflections, should keep it on
• SSSS Scattering: On - very very minimal performance impact and honestly really hard to spot differences (characters skin slightly smoother)
• Depth of Field: OFF - surprising turning it off like give me 2-3 more fps when in the settings menu, in Focus mode it looks pretty cinematic and can hide some ugly far away details tho
• Volumetric Fog: Low - noticeably save some performance, no noticeable visual change
• Variable Rate Shading: OFF - Turning this ON give you nearly 1% better performance at the cost of some shader grainy/fuzziness you may notice sometimes.
• Framegen: OFF - unless you can run stable above 40fps And If you don't have DLSS framegen, don't use FSR framegen - at lower fps FSR framegen in this game is the worst I've seen with a lot of flickering and artifacts. Use Lossless Scaling framegen instead, I've tested them and got better performance and visual when using them both with DLSS

• huy98vn

[u/cantthink278]

I officially can’t play at all. Not sure what’s going on.

4090 oc, 14900k, 64gb 6000 cl30. If I make it into the actual game/load into town, I seem to crash within 60 seconds usually within 10 though. Tried rolling back my drivers, disabling frame gen, tried playing on my 4k tv and 1440p monitor but no bueno.

I’ve tried probably 20+ times with all random fixes but nothing seems to work, game is literally unplayable for me…

[u/Shorkan → u/cantthink278]

Disable any and all OC and undervolt.

I had a very stable undervolt on MSI Afterburner that never gave me any crash in any game or benchmark, but Wilds kept crashing until I disabled it. A lot more people with similar experiences.

[u/cantthink278 → u/Shorkan]

Really? I definitely have an undervolt/oc on both my cpu/gpu. I will give it a go with everything set to default

[u/Shorkan → u/cantthink278]

If I were you I would try just disabling the GPU stuff. I don't realize having reading anyone complaining about CPU OC, and I'm pretty sure mine is OC'd (but I don't really remember anymore lol).

OC and undervolt on nvidia GPUs was a no-go for sure. Plenty of people confirming it.

Also, you don't even need to restart your computer. In my case, just clicking "Reset" on Afterburner and launching the game will result on a completely crash-free experience. Applying my undervolt and launching the game will make me crash in less than 15 minutes.

[u/cantthink278 → u/Shorkan]

Yep you are the bomb. It’s run for 5 minutes now which is the longest it’s run since I disabled the afterburner settings. I truly hope they fix this sooner than later so I don’t have to keep turning off afterburner only in MH

[u/Aware-Evidence-5170 → u/cantthink278]

Have you installed REFramework to remove the Capcom anti-tamper DRM? That was the main source of my crashes for me personally. But I have heard that the Nvidia app's overlay can mess the game stability too (wasn't an issue for me).

But tbh if the game crashes because of an undervolt, it just means it's an unstable undervolt. More tuning would be required. I have PL+UV my 13900K CPU and UV+OC my RTX 5080 GPU. The game runs extremely stable even with steam recording running on the background. Last longest session I played was ~5 hours.

You absolutely need to watch your overclocks, an undervolt can be 'benchmark stable' but crashes on gaming workloads. Do note that enabling frame gen complicates the overclocking behaviour even more as the GPU shifts the load from the upper portion of the voltage-freq curve down to the lower half (assuming frame rate limiters are set; GPU usage would be lower).

I'm not sure if it's the same behaviour as on RTX 4000, but on the RTX 5000 gpus there's plenty of clock stretching on the core clocks. You can have an unstable overclock even when the synthetic benchmarks are fine and you see a higher core clocks. In this case, a higher boost clockspeed does not neccessarily mean it's better. For reference, my GPU is UV+Overclocked to 3150 Mhz @ 990 mV with memory running at 36 Gbps (ie. 4 Gbps over the memory spec; +2500 MHz memory on MSI afterburner). Anything above 3170 MHz has degraded the GPU's performance + stability. However I could get things stable if I lower my GPU memory overclock down to spec. Takeaway is - if you have time, try figuring out the optimal memory overclock for your core clocks.

[u/Shorkan → u/cantthink278]

Glad it worked.

Sadly, it's been an issue since the first beta weekend, and I don't think they have ever acknowledged it. I'm pretty sure that with all the tech issues they have to deal with, people fiddling with OC aren't in their priority list.