Hogwarts Legacy has been a treat to play for console users, with the game’s separate fidelity and performance modes allowing for seamless switching between high-quality visuals and great framerates while exploring and fighting. The same cannot be said for PC users, however, because there have been performance issues plaguing the game since its early access launch day on Feb 7.
These reported issues range from random frame rate drops to blurriness during camera movement to loading issues during some sequences. Thankfully, there have been no major glitches unlike the disastrous launch of some games like Cyberpunk 2077, so that is one less thing to worry about. The optimization on PC is less than ideal and players are hoping for a fix when the game officially launches for all players on Feb 10.
How to fix performance issues in Hogwarts Legacy
Hogwarts Legacy does a system scan of your hardware and provides you with an optimized preset when you first launch the game. This does not, however, solve all the performance issues with the game. So while we wait for an optimization patch and/or Nvidia graphic driver updates (if you’re using an Nvidia graphics card), there are a few small tweaks you can make to your system to make it run smoother.
First off, if your system supports Ray Tracing, turn all of the Ray Tracing settings off. This is the first major change you can make because the Ray Tracing features use up a lot of resources on your system. Graphic cards such as Nvidia RTX 3080 and above should not have too much of an issue here, but if your graphics memory and CPU are a little on the slower end, turning it off will definitely create a major difference in performance.
Secondly, if you have a mid-range system, turning shadows down to the minimum setting and turning off the Motion Blur feature should significantly improve performance. On that subject, if you’re still having issues, it would be best to turn your default settings down one level below compared to what the system preset was (i.e. if it was High, turn it down to Medium).
The final thing to note here would be if all else fails, lower your resolution settings. This might not be the best option visually, but it definitely beats having the game run with fps drops and stuttering. Besides, with the upscaling feature that Hogwarts Legacy has running by default, it should not look as bad as some of the older games do when you lower their resolution.
These are just some minor tweaks you can make until we get an optimized patch for the game soon.
