Hogwarts Legacy: How To Fix Lag

Summary: Hogwarts Legacy is lagging for PC users for various reasons. This can be fixed by using a few traditional tweaks.

Hogwarts Legacy Fix Lag: The year’s most anticipated title is finally here. If we consider gaming magazine ratings, this is one of the biggest releases of 2023. On top of that, this also might be the best Hogwarts game ever made.

The ratings are excellent, but the troubles we gamers face are not. The game is full of performance issues, and this might be something only the early access users will face as we are getting the game three days before the standard edition comes out on February 10th. We will be beta-testing the game and making it better for the others.

Read: How To Fix Crashing in Hogwarts Legacy

Note: The game also uses a 3rd-party DRM (Denuvo Anti-Tamper). Denuvo is known for hitting performance for PC users.

How To Fix Lag in Hogwarts Legacy

Let’s jump right into it and eliminate the performance issues using traditional tweaks.

Change Game Graphic Settings

The simplest way to fix FPS Issues in games is by changing the graphic settings. During the launch days, the games are not optimized, and some settings don’t work well with many PCs.

For starters, begin with toning down your game settings and keeping high demanding settings such as shadows at low. I will post a detailed blog post shortly after the game releases here.

Change Graphic Control Panel Settings

For Nvidia Users:

• Open up Nvidia’s Control Panel. Right-click on desktop > click Nvidia control panel
• Click Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings
• Find “Hogwarts Legacy” you can manually add the game if it’s not on the list
• Now, make the following changes:

Monitor Tech: G-Sync (If available)
Maximum Pre-rendered frames: 2
Threaded optimization: On
Power Management: Prefer Maximum Performance
Texture Filtering – Quality:  Performance
Low Lateny Mode: Ultra (High or Ultra makes sense only for PvP Games)*

Nvidia Low Latency Mode is a feature found in Nvidia’s Control Panel. It is designed to help reduce input latency on Nvidia graphics card systems. Low Latency Mode can be used in games or any other application where you need to reduce the time it takes for your inputs to be registered.

For AMD Users

• Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use Application settings
• Anti-aliasing Method: Multisampling
• Morphological Filtering: Off
• Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Use application settings
• Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
• Surface Format Optimization: On
• Wait for V-sync: Off
• OpenGL Triple Buffering: Off
• Shader Cache: AMD optimized
• Tesselation Mode: Override application settings
• Maximum Tesselation Level: Off
• GPU Workload: Graphics
• Chill: Off
• Frame Rate Target Control: Disabled

Update Device Drivers

• Download Nvidia Drivers
• Download AMD Drivers

Nvidia and AMD both generally push updates that are optimized for AAA titles. The Nvidia update should come out in a few hours.

On the other hand, Updating Windows ensures you get all the performance enhancements. With every new update, Microsoft improves the speed and efficiency of the operating system. For example, with the release of Windows 11, Microsoft made several changes to improve performance, including faster startup times and improved graphics processing.

Note: The current driver might not be compatible with the game; I saw a few reports where users reported issues with the current driver. I haven’t faced any problem like this, but you can roll back the driver and check if the issue gets fixed.

Enable High-Performance Mode for Hogwarts Legacy

This setting is set to High Performance as default for most. But in some cases, Windows might change it to Power Saving if the setting is set to Let Windows Decide. We have read a few instances of this happening on Reddit Forums, primarily for Gaming Laptops.

The steps to do this are as follows:

• Go to Graphic Settings > Search for Graphic Settings in Windows Search
• Click on the result
• Now from the newly opened window, located graphics performance preference
• Search for Hogwarts Legacy
• Click on the App > Options
• Select “High Performance” and check “Don’t use Auto HDR” (Applicable for HDR Monitors)

Enable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling

This option was added to the graphic settings page after the Windows 10 May 2020 update. Many YouTubers such as Linus Tech Tips, Jayz2Cents, and Gamers Nexus have tested the performance when turned on or off. They found that setting makes little to no difference, good or bad, on mid to high-end machines and slight improvement to framerates on low-end computers (but also brings instability at times).

To enable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling

• Open Windows Search, and type “Graphic Settings.”
• Under Default Settings, click “Change Default Graphics Settings.”
• Click the radio button to toggle the setting on or off.

Conclusion: Turn this on or off and compare the difference in FPS.

Enable Game Mode

I have noticed considerable improvements in the Game Mode in Windows 11. For Windows 10, we suggest disabling both the Game mode and game bar, whereas this option should be enabled on Windows 11.

To Enable: Type game mode in search and enable it.

Use Compatibility Settings

Of course, not all the titles are optimized for the new operating system yet. This should change soon. Until then, you can use Windows’s inbuilt compatibility setting. To do so:

• Right-click on the app’s exe file
• Go to properties > Compatibility
• Under Compatibility mode, select “Windows 10.”
• Also, click on the “disable fullscreen optimizations” checkbox
• Click Apply and close the box.

One more thing suggested by Reddit users is doing a clean Windows 11 install rather than upgrading it from Win 10. Also, DX12-optimized games benefit while older ones are taking a hit.

These settings and optimizations were tested on PCs with the following configuration:

• i5 8500 with GTX 1060 @1080p
• i3 10300 with RTX 2060 @1080p
• i7 8700 with GTX 1650 @1080p
• AMD Ryzen 5600x with RTX 3080 @2k

Sources:

• Testing on our PCs
• WB Forum
• Reddit Forum