Hogwarts Legacy BEST Settings For PC

We'll be optimizing Hogwarts Legacy's settings for the best balance between visuals and performance.

Judging from the scenic views of the Hogwarts castle grounds to the little details in the halls and common rooms, Hogwarts Legacy is a demanding game. But don’t you worry, my fellow wizarding world lover, I’ve come up with some of the Hogwarts Legacy best settings for PC to help you retain those graphics while attaining decent FPS. 

Update: The majority of the memory leakage issue was addressed and fixed in the June 2nd, 2023 patch. This helped improve performance significantly.

I’ve tested Hogwarts Legacy on the following PC specifications:

  • CPU: Core-i5 12400f
  • GPU: RTX 4070
  • RAM: 16GB DDR4
  • Storage: 2.5TB SSD
  • Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Key Takeaways

At a minimum, you’ll need an Intel i5-6600 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400 CPU, NVIDIA GTX 960 or AMD RX 470 GPU, and 16 GB of RAM to run Hogwarts Legacy on your PC.


According to my testing, the following settings tax your FPS the most:

  • Material Quality
  • Fog Quality
  • Foliage Quality
  • Post-Process Quality
  • Shadow Quality
  • View Distance Quality
  • Population and View Distance
  • All Ray Tracing Options

Hogwarts Legacy has a major memory management problem which results in performance degradation over time. The game performed well initially but then the FPS dropped from 75 to a single-digit figure while playing for ~30 minutes. This degradation also made textures glitchy for me which was quite weird. These issues were also discussed in detail in Asad Ahmad’s review of Hogwarts Legacy.

Hogwarts Legacy Best Graphics Settings

Best Graphics Settings for Hogwarts Legacy
Best Graphics Settings

I’ve tested the game thoroughly on several different setting combinations and found the following to be a perfect balance between good visuals and performance.

Let’s go over the best display options for Hogwarts Legacy quickly.

Best Display Settings for Hogwarts Legacy Pt. 1
Hogwarts Legacy Display Settings 1

An Overview of Display Options in Hogwarts Legacy

Windowed Mode Windowed Fullscreen
Anti-Aliasing Mode TAA – High
Upscaling Type DLSS / FSR 2
Upscale Mode Balanced
Frame Generation On
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency On+ Boost
VSYNC Off
Framerate No Limit
Field of View Personal Preference
Motion Blur Off
Depth of Field On
Chromatic Aberration Off
Film Grain Off
Select GPU Select Main GPU

Now, I’ll be going over the main graphics settings in detail.

Best Graphics Settings for Hogwarts Legacy Pt. 1
Graphics Settings Pt.1

Summary of Graphics Options

Global Quality Preset Custom
Effects Quality Medium
Material Quality Low
Fog Quality Low
Sky Quality Medium
Foliage Quality Medium
Post-Process Quality Low
Shadow Quality Low
Texture Quality According to GPU’s Vram
View Distance Quality Medium
Population Quality Medium
Ray Tracing Reflections Off
Shadows Off
Ambient Occlusion Off
Ray Tracing Quality Disabled

Global Quality Preset: Custom

Leave this at “Custom” since you’ll be adjusting individual settings.

Effects Quality: Medium

Effects Quality Hogwarts
Effects Quality Hogwarts (Image by eXputer)

Medium offers a good balance between visual quality and performance.

Material Quality: Low

Material Quality Hogwarts
Material Quality Hogwarts (Image by eXputer)

Lowering this setting provides a significant FPS boost while still maintaining reasonable visual quality.

Fog Quality: Low

Fog Quality Hogwarts
Fog Quality Hogwarts (Image by eXputer)

Set it to “Low” for improved performance with minimal impact on visuals.

Sky Quality: Medium

“Medium” is a good choice, as it affects clouds but doesn’t significantly impact gameplay.

Foliage Quality: Medium

Foliage Quality Hogwarts
Foliage Quality Hogwarts (Image by eXputer)

Opt for “Medium” to strike a balance between visuals and performance, especially in forested areas.

Post-Process Quality: Low

Keep this setting at “Low” since motion blur and chromatic aberration are already disabled.

Shadow Quality: Low

Shadows Hogwarts
Shadows Hogwarts (Image by eXputer)

Even at “Low,” shadows in Hogwarts Legacy look good and won’t heavily affect performance.

Texture Quality: Adjust according to GPU VRAM

Texture Quality Hogwarts
Texture Quality Hogwarts (Image by eXputer)

Choose a texture quality based on your GPU’s VRAM: Low (4GB VRAM), Medium (6GB VRAM), High (8GB VRAM), or Ultra (8GB+ VRAM).

View Distance Quality: Medium

“Medium” strikes a balance between performance and reducing texture pop-ins.

Population Quality: Medium

Leave it at “Medium” for a decent crowd without a significant FPS hit.

Ray Tracing Reflections, Shadows, Ambient Occlusion: OFF

Disable all Ray Tracing features to maximize performance.

Ray Tracing Quality: Disabled

This option should already be disabled since you’ve turned off Ray Tracing effects.

We’ve finally applied the Hogwarts Legacy best settings in the game’s graphics options. These will help you tremendously in solving issues like FPS drops and stuttering. 

Best Nvidia Settings for Hogwarts Legacy

Best Nvidia Settings for Hogwarts Legacy
Hogwarts Legacy Nvidia Settings

After optimizing the in-game settings for Hogwarts Legacy, we’ll be configuring the best Hogwarts Legacy settings in the Nvidia Control Panel. Nvidia Control Panel has tons of settings in it that will give you a surprising boost in performance

Nvidia Settings For Hogwarts Legacy Summarized:

Image Sharpening Off
Background Max Frame Rate 20
Low Latency Mode Off
Max Frame Rate Off
Power Management Mode Prefer Max Performance
Anisotropic Sample Optimization On
Texture Filtering On
Quality – Texture Filtering High Performance
Trilinear Optimization – Texture Filtering On
Vertical Sync Off

Although we’ve covered only the essential settings above, if you want a complete guide, you can check out our best Nvidia Control Panel settings guide.

Best AMD Settings for Hogwarts Legacy

Best AMD Settings for Hogwarts Legacy
Hogwarts Legacy AMD Settings

After optimizing Nvidia settings, let’s tend to our Team Red here. Similarly, we’ll be using a combination of the Hogwarts Legacy best settings for the AMD Radeon panel that’ll help you squeeze every bit of performance out of your GPU

Summary of AMD Settings

Radeon Anti-Lag Enabled
AMD Radeon Chill Disabled
Radeon Boost Disabled
Image Sharpening Off
Radeon Enhanced Sync Enabled
Wait for Vertical Refresh Always Off
Frame Rate Target Control Disabled
Antialiasing Use Application Settings
Antialiasing Method Multisampling
Morphological Antialiasing  Disabled
Anisotropic Filtering Disabled
Texture Filtering Quality Disabled
Surface Format Optimization Enabled
OpenGL Triple Buffering Disabled
Reset Shader Cache Perform Reset

If you want a detailed guide on Radeon software, we’ve also got a guide on AMD’s best settings guide.

Best Windows Optimizations for Hogwarts Legacy

Best Windows Optimizations for Hogwarts Legacy
Best Windows Optimizations

We’ve optimized everything, from the Hogwarts Legacy’s best settings for in-game graphics to GPU-level settings. Now it’s time to perform some Windows tweaks and optimizations that’ll help you gain performance across the board.

  • Turn on Game Mode: It’s a great gaming-centric feature that helps direct your PC resources toward the game more efficiently. It even puts any pesky background applications to rest until the game closes. You can enable it by going into Windows Settings > Gaming > Game Mode. 
  • Disable Useless Applications From Background: Several applications hog your system resources and continue to run in the background while you’re enjoying your games. The best way to free up these resources is to close down these applications through Task Manager.
  • Enable Ultimate Power Plan: If you want the best performance in Hogwarts Legacy without any compromises, you’ll need to enable this hidden power mode in Windows. It’ll help take your PC’s performance up a notch by running everything at full tilt. To enable it, simply enter this prompt in Windows Powershell: powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61.
  • Enable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling: It handles high-priority instructions on the CPU like rendering frames, passes it to GPU and the load is divided while resulting in better performance and more stability. You can enable it by going into Windows Settings > System > Display > Graphics Settings > Change Default Graphics Settings.

Bonus Tweak: Edit Engine.ini File in Hogwarts Legacy

Here’s a bonus performance fix for you. If you’ve been experiencing stuttering in Hogwarts Legacy, you can edit the Engine.ini file and change up the GPU pool size in the game’s save folder.

Here’s how to apply this fix:

Hogwarts Legacy Engine.INI File
Engine.ini Location
  1. Open up Windows Explorer and go to the following path: 
    C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Hogwarts Legacy\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor
  2. You’ll find Engine.ini in the WindowsNoEditor Folder > Open it up. 
  3. In the Engine.ini File > Paste the following at the bottom:
[SystemSettings]

r.bForceCPUAccessToGPUSkinVerts=True

r.GTSyncType=1

r.OneFrameThreadLag=1

r.FinishCurrentFrame=0

r.TextureStreaming=1

r.Streaming.PoolSize=3072

r.Streaming.LimitPoolSizeToVRAM=1

[ConsoleVariables]

AllowAsyncRenderThreadUpdates=1

AllowAsyncRenderThreadUpdatesDuringGamethreadUpdates=1

AllowAsyncRenderThreadUpdatesEditor=1
  1. Once you’ve pasted the code in the Engine.ini file, close the file while saving the changes. 

The only thing you need to change is the Steaming PoolSize value according to your GPU’s VRAM. Change it according to the following: 

  • For 4GB GPU VRAM: 2048
  • For 8GB GPU VRAM: 3072
  • For 8GB+ GPU VRAM: 4096 – 5120

This aims to reduce the stuttering you’re experiencing in Hogwarts Legacy by letting the game utilize your VRAM more efficiently. However, you can also turn down a few settings in-game alongside this fix to completely eliminate stuttering.

What’s The Performance Like Now?

I’ve personally tested every bit of setting and optimization to figure out the best combo of optimized settings. I was able to maintain a solid 80-95 average FPS with optimized settings on 1440p resolution in the Hogsmeade area. This isn’t surprising considering I was running the game on an RTX 4070. 

These optimized settings even let me enjoy Ray Tracing at 60 FPS. However, things got even when I enabled DLSS and Frame Generation which bumped my FPS back to the 90s range. However, I did feel a bit of micro-stuttering after enabling Frame Generation. 

Hogwarts Legacy may not be in a perfect state right now, but rest assured, its performance will get better with future patches. Until then, I hope our best settings guide was able to improve your experience with the game. 

 
 
Did you successfully optimize the best settings for Hogwarts Legacy on your PC? Why not check out our different strategy guides on Hogwarts Legacy next?
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Ayyoun is a Senior Writer & Editor for Error Fixes, and Game Settings guides on eXputer. He’s been passionate about games and technology since he got his hands on the PlayStation 1. He has a software engineering background and loves to play games from a technical perspective. He has a knack for uncovering solutions for the latest games and presenting them in easy-to-follow guides for his audience. You can keep up with his gaming activity on his Steam profile.

Experience: 7+ years || Worked For VeryAli Gaming and IGN || Education: B.S Software Engineering, Google IT Professional Certificate, Editing Mastery from Udemy, and Digital Journalism.

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