❗ Monster Hunter Wilds Crashing on Ryzen 5 1600 (Zen 1) — Exception C0000096 — Likely Unsupported Instruction

[unsword]

Hey all — I’m dealing with consistent game crashes that appear to be related to CPU instruction compatibility, and I wanted to both raise awareness and report this in detail.

System Specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (Zen 1)
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4070 (Driver: 528.83 – March 2025, WHQL)
RAM: 32GB DDR4
Storage: Fast SSD
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Display: Ultrawide (3440x1440)

Crash Behavior:

The game consistently crashes to desktop with no error message. Sometimes it takes 30–40 minutes, sometimes just 2. Once REFramework was removed, I started seeing the proper Capcom crash reporter, and the crash log always shows:

ExceptionCode : C0000096
ExceptionAddress: 0x14BEECDB2
Faulting Module : MonsterHunterWilds.exe
That code (C0000096) points to a privileged or unsupported instruction being called. From what I’ve gathered, this could be a result of the game trying to execute instructions that are only available on newer CPUs (like AVX2 or FMA3), which Zen 1 doesn’t support.

What I’ve Already Tried (in full):

Software & Mod Fixes:
Fully clean uninstalled the game

Manually deleted leftover folders from:
SteamApps/common
%AppData%
Documents\My Games\

No REFramework or mods reinstalled
Removed all autorun/ scripts, .ini configs, and Lua files
Verified files multiple times
Ran the game with -dx11 launch flag
Tried both fullscreen and borderless windowed
Tested with both ultrawide and 16:9 resolutions
Disabled all overlays (Steam, NVIDIA, Discord)
Set graphics to Low/Medium
Let game idle and also ran live hunts to trigger crash conditions
Hardware & System Settings:
Updated GPU drivers (WHQL)
Monitored system (CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM) — no overheating, no spikes
Tried on High Performance power plan
Disabled background apps and cleaned startup

Conclusion:

Based on all this testing, the game appears to execute CPU instructions not supported by Ryzen 1000-series (Zen 1). This wasn't always an issue — crashes likely began after a recent patch that introduced new code paths. If the game isn't doing proper CPU feature checks before calling these instructions, users on Zen 1 chips (still common!) will continue to crash hard with Exception C0000096.

Request to Capcom:

Please consider implementing a CPU feature check or fallback for users on Zen 1 or similar older CPUs. At the very least, updating the system requirements to reflect AVX2 or similar needs would help players avoid this frustrating issue.

Happy to provide full logs, crash dumps, or testing help if needed.