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Hogwarts Legacy Optimization Guide: Best Graphics Settings for PC (2024)

Hogwarts Legacy is among the prettiest games of 2023. Unfortunately, it launched with subpar optimization on PC, failing to hit a consistent 60 FPS at 4K even on the mighty GeForce RTX 4090 with ray tracing. Since then, Portkey has gradually improved its performance across various platforms. Still, we were able to “just” hit over 60 FPS at 4K RT Ultra on our system. Here’s a look at the impact of different graphics settings on performance (and quality) in Hogwarts Legacy.

Windows/System Settings to Optimize

  • Enable Resizable BAR.
  • Turn on Game Mode.
  • Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
  • Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
  • Disable Memory Integrity. Windows Menu->VBS->Device Security.
  • Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
  • Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
  • Here’s a guide with more detailed instructions.

Hogwarts Legacy PC System Requirements

720p Low @ 30 FPS

  • CPU: Intel Core i5-6600|AMD Ryzen 5 1400.
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960|AMD Radeon RX 470.
  • RAM: 16 GB.
  • Storage: 85 GB SSD.

1080p High @ 60 FPS

  • CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K|AMD Ryzen 5 3600.
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 1080 Ti|AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT.
  • RAM: 16 GB.
  • Storage: 85 GB SSD.

1440p Ultra @ 60 FPS

  • CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K|AMD Ryzen 7 5800X.
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti|AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT.
  • RAM: 32 GB.
  • Storage: 85 GB SSD.

4K Ultra @ 60 FPS

  • CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K|AMD Ryzen 7 5800X.
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti|AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT.
  • RAM: 32 GB.
  • Storage: 85 GB SSD.

Contents & Testing Methodology

  • Contents:
    1. Resolution & Graphics Presets.
    2. RT: Reflections, Shadows & Ambient Occlusion.
    3. Effects & Post Processing Quality.
    4. View Distance, Foliage & Fog Quality.
    5. Materials, Clouds, Shadows & Population Quality.
    6. Upscaling & Frame Generation.
    7. VRAM usage.
    8. CPU bottlenecks.
    9. Performance Summary.
    10. Optimized Settings for Hogwarts Legacy.
  • Hardware setup used:
    • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
    • Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
    • GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090 FE.
    • Motherboard: MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi.
    • Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.

Hogwarts Legacy: Resolution & Graphics Presets

Hogwarts Legacy averages 87 FPS at 4K “UItra,” and roughly 130 FPS at 1440p/1080p, indicating a CPU-bound workload at the latter. A similar picture is drawn with ray-tracing enabled, where 1080p and 1440p produce approximately the same performance: ~ 70 FPS.

Fortunately, Hogwarts Legacy scales well across its four graphics presets, averaging 87 FPS at “Ultra,” 191 FPS at “High,” 120 FPS at “Medium” and 132 FPS at the “Low” quality settings at 4K.

Ray Tracing Performance: Reflections, Shadows & Ambient Occlusion

Ray Tracing drastically undermines the game’s performance even on the fastest graphics cards. Our GeForce RTX 4090 dropped from an average of 121 FPS to 72 FPS (-40%) when enabling ray-tracing with the highest quality settings at 4K (with frame generation). The three lower-quality presets perform the same with all three settings enabled, 25% faster than “Ultra.”

Ray Traced Shadows is the most taxing graphics setting in Hogwarts Legacy, and it’s not even used for all the shadows. Only the nearby ones, while the distant shadows are handled by shadow maps. Disabling RT Shadows grants a 22% performance boost at 4K, versus 7% and 4% when disabling RT Ambient Occlusion and RT Reflections.

RT Reflections are only cast on select surfaces, including puddles, and shiny, and wet surfaces. Water bodies, including lakes and streams, are covered by cube-mapped reflections.

Disabling ray-tracing requires the game to be restarted as it switches from DX12 Ultimate to DX12 standard.

Effects & Post Processing Quality

Effects Quality sets the resolution of various spell effects, light-related shading, and other visual effects used by the game. The highest setting reduces performance by up to 10%, while “High” and “Medium” perform the same as “Low.”

Post Processing is the most intensive rasterized setting in Hogwarts Legacy. It sets the quality of various late pipeline effects, including motion blur, depth of field, lens flare, and ambient occlusion. It reduces the game’s performance by up to 15% at the “Ultra” setting. Medium is recommended for low-end PCs.

View Distance, Foliage & Fog Quality

View Distance sets the rendering distance of vegetation, terrain, and buildings. It subtly impacts performance in Hogwarts Castle and Hogsmeade but can drain framerates by over 10% out in the open wilderness.

Foliage Quality sets the density of grass, shrubs, and other ground vegetation all around the world. Like the previous setting, its impact is mostly trivial but can increase to 10% or higher in the wilderness.

Fog Quality sets the density of volumetric fog in the morning hours of the game. Luckily, it doesn’t have an appreciable impact on frame rates, regardless of your location.

Materials, Clouds, Shadows & Population Quality

The remaining settings including Population Quality, Shadow Quality, Cloud Quality, and Material Quality don’t much impact the performance with mild to marginal results on visual fidelity.

Hogwarts Legacy: Upscaling & Frame Generation

Hogwarts Legacy features spatial and temporal upscaling technologies, including NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR 2, and Intel XeSS 1.3. These can only improve the performance by 35-40% as the game runs into a CPU bottleneck close to 70 FPS at 4K.

Frame Generation is essential for most players targeting more than 60 FPS. It yielded over 110 FPS (+2.3x) at 4K RT Ultra on our Ryzen 9 7950X| GeForce RTX 4090 setup. It is instrumental even at 1080p, boosting the average framerate from 70 FPS to 140 FPS (2x) with ray-tracing maxed out.

We recommend GeForce RTX 30 series users download the DLSS to FSR 3 FG mod which enables frame generation on older RTX cards by replacing the DLSS-based frame interpolation with the FSR 3 implementation:

  • Download the “dlssg-to-fsr3” archive and extract its contents anywhere. 
  • Run the “DisableNvidiaSignatureChecks.reg” registry file, and accept the dialog box that pops up.
  • Download the “Universal” archive and extract the “dll_version” folder.
  • Copy the .dll files to Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Binaries\Win64. Replace if needed.
  • Enabling VSync through the NVIDIA app or control panel is recommended.

Hogwarts Legacy: VRAM Usage

Hogwarts Legacy uses up to 16 GB of graphics memory at 4K Ultra with ray-tracing maxed out. Disabling RT reduces the VRAM usage to 12 GB, while the “Medium” quality preset uses around 8.5 GB at 4K.

FHD/1080p and 1440p use 12 GB and 13 GB of VRAM with and ~11 GB without ray tracing at the Ultra quality settings.

Hogwarts Legacy: CPU Bottlenecks

Hogwarts Legacy is severely CPU-bound at 1080p with a GPU-Busy deviation of 28% at the “Ultra” quality preset. QHD/1440p is mildly bottlenecked with a deviation of 10-12%. 4K is completely GPU-bound.

1080p Ultra

The CPU bottleneck worsens with ray-tracing, increasing the GPU-Busy deviation to 35% at 1080p and 16% at 1440p. 4K, as expected remains GPU-bound even with ray-tracing maxed out.

1080p RT Ultra

Hogwarts Legacy Performance Summary

Ray Tracing reduces the game’s performance by nearly half across all resolutions. Ray Traced Shadows are the most taxing of the trio, draining framerates by over 20% at 4K. In comparison, the Ray Traced Reflections/Ambient Occlusion is about as taxing as some of the rasterized settings.

Among the raster-based settings, Post Processing and Effects Quality are the hard hitters, compromising performance by 16% and 9%, respectively. View Distance can also reduce framerates by up to 10% in certain areas of the game.

Optimized Settings for Hogwarts Legacy PC (2024)

Best Settings forHigh-endMidrangeLow-end PC
Resolution4K (3840×2160)1440p (2560×1440)1080p (1920×1080)
FPS Target90 FPS90 FPS60 FPS
UpscalingDLSS|FSR BalancedDLSS|FSR QualityDLSS|FSR Quality
Frame GenerationOnOnOn
FOVNo impactNo impactNo impact
Texture QualityUltraUltraHigh (Ultra for 12 GB)
Effects QualityUltraUltraHigh
Material QualityUltraUltraUltra
Cloud QualityUltraUltraUltra
Shadow QualityUltraUltraUltra
Post ProcessingUltraUltraHigh
Foliage QualityUltraUltraUltra
Fog QualityUltraUltraUltra
View DistanceUltraUltraHigh
Population QualityUltraUltraUltra
Ray Tracing ShadowsOnOnOff
Ray Tracing Ambient OcclusionOnOnOn
Ray Tracing ReflectionsOnOnOn
Ray Tracing QualityUltraHighHigh
CPUCore i7-14700K/Ryzen 7 7800X3DCore i5-13600K/Ryzen 7 7700XCore i5-12400
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPURTX 4080/RX 7900 XTXRTX 4070/RX 7800 XTRTX 3060/RTX 4060/RX 6600
Memory32 GB (dual-channel)16 GB (dual-channel)16 GB (dual-channel)

Hogwarts Legacy: Best Steam Deck Settings

Here’s a link to our Hogwarts Legacy Performance Guide for the Steam Deck.

Optimized SettingsSteam Deck OLED
Window ModeWindowed Fullscreen
Resolution800p (1280 x 800)
V-Sync/FramerateOff/Uncapped
UpscalingAMD FSR 2 “Balanced”
Field of View0
DOF/Motion Blur/Film GrainOff
Shadow QualityLow
Texture QualityMedium
Material QualityLow
Sky QualityLow
Fog QualityLow
Effects QualityLow
Post Process QualityLow
View Distance QualityLow
Population QualityLow
Foliage QualityLow
Ray TracingOff

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Find me at HardwareTimes and PC Opset.
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