Monster Hunter Wilds struggles to run native 1080p utilizing the preferred GPU on Steam, Nvidia’s RTX 3060

Trendy PC gaming has turn out to be more and more demanding in comparison with video games from 5-10 years in the past. We noticed this with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which not solely had GPU {hardware} ray tracing at least requirement but additionally restricted full ray tracing (path tracing) to Nvidia GPUs solely; not even AMD’s flagship 7900 XTX may use it. Doom: The Dark Ages also introduced ray tracing as a requirement. In different phrases, your previous Nvidia GTX GPU merely is not adequate anymore.

Now, it appears some RTX house owners are additionally being pushed into the identical class as older GTX GPUs. Benchmarks from the upcoming RPG Monster Hunter Wilds present the RTX 3060 struggling to keep up a constant 60 FPS at 1080p. Though the sport does not launch till February twenty eighth, Capcom has provided a free benchmark PC tool that allows you to take a look at how properly MHW will run in your system earlier than making the ultimate buy. And spoiler alert – it isn’t wanting good for mid-range PC avid gamers.

The RTX 3060 is just not adequate for native 1080p, DLSS is a should

Daniel Owen, a tech enthusiast on YouTube, shared a efficiency evaluation of Monster Hunter Wilds on an RTX 3060 paired with a Ryzen 5 5600X. The take a look at was achieved on three completely different settings: one primarily based on the sport’s computerized suggestion (medium settings with DLSS set to efficiency), medium settings with none upscaling, and Extremely settings with none upscaling. Issues don’t look nice because the system struggled to keep up a constant 60 FPS in intensive gameplay scenes throughout all three exams.

At medium settings with DLSS efficiency enabled, the RTX 3060 averaged 61 FPS. Nonetheless, there have been a number of cases the place the FPS dropped beneath 40, particularly in gameplay sections. Moreover, throughout cutscenes, there have been important FPS spikes. This was the end result at medium settings with an inside decision of 540p, upscaled to 1080p. For the medium settings with 1080p native decision, the GPU scored a mean FPS of 48, with demanding areas barely pushing the GPU above the 30 FPS mark. With Extremely settings and DLSS disabled, the efficiency was predictably poor, with heavy fluctuations throughout cutscenes and gameplay dropping to twenty-eight FPS at instances.

That stated, the GPU wasn’t the one element put beneath stress. The CPU was additionally examined on the town areas with numerous NPCs. In these conditions, you might see the GPU being bottlenecked by the CPU, inflicting the FPS to dip beneath the 40 vary.

The RTX 3060 has lengthy been the preferred GPU on Steam and has even continued to be a best-seller in 2025. Whereas this card will ultimately make method for newer generations, it nonetheless holds the highest spot in response to the newest Steam Hardware & Software Survey (January 2025), accounting for five.06% of all customers on Steam.

The state of recent gaming

As you possibly can see from the benchmarks, the sport is just not solely closely GPU-intensive but additionally CPU-intensive. Even an RTX 3060, which isn’t as previous as this recreation makes it to be, can solely ship a “playable expertise” on medium settings. Which means that the gameplay you’re getting with this standard card isn’t nice, with graphic high quality which we’d say is lackluster by many individuals’s requirements.

This raises the query: are builders anticipating avid gamers to improve to the newest {hardware} yearly? Or is that this simply poor optimization for a broad vary of {hardware}? For those who ask me, it’s extra probably the latter. Just lately, we’ve seen video games which are optimized properly, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 being a first-rate instance, as the sport even runs on a handheld like the Steam Deck.

MWH, however, is simply not a type of video games. We’ve not too long ago examined the sport, benchmarking the game with an RTX 5080, and even that doesn’t present the smoothest 4K expertise you’ll ever see with out assist from DLSS – body technology specifically. For instance, the sport averaged between 55-58 FPS maxed out at 4K native decision (no body gen).