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Hogwarts Legacy frame drops are causing quite a stir for anyone enjoying the early access. If you’re gaming on console, you’re likely not encountering as many problems, though many PC gamers are reporting that the game keeps crashing. While we’ve already had a go at providing a solution to that, there’s another issue relating to the game’s performance.
Like we saw with Cyberpunk 2077, games developed for console and then ported to PC often suffer from a lack of optimisation with all the different hardware variations possible. Hogwarts Legacy is no different, and it seems that gamers on some really impressive gaming PCs are still struggling to get the game to run smoothly.
If you’re experiencing frame drops and stuttering in Hogwarts Legacy, here’s what we’d suggest to fix it.
How to fix Hogwarts Legacy frame drops and stuttering
- Disable ray-tracing
- Turn on DLSS (if you’re on a compatible GPU)
- Adjust DLSS to Ultra Performance
- Reduce graphical quality and textures
- Update graphics card drivers
When you first run Hogwarts Legacy, it can be tempting to choose the recommended settings for the game, though you’re likely going to have a smoother experience if you customize them yourself.
It’s especially important to tailor these settings for your gaming PC, especially with older hardware which doesn’t have the same software compatibility as the latest gear.
Disable ray-tracing
Ray-tracing is a great feature designed to generate realistic simulations of light, though it’s an incredibly intensive procedure that offers mostly aesthetic changes to the game.
If you disable ray-tracing, you might not have as an immersive experience, though you’ll certainly enjoy much smoother gameplay. Disabling ray-tracing in Hogwarts Legacy is one of the main fixes for frame drops and stuttering.
However, if you’re not sure your graphics card has ray-tracing capabilities, you can read about the best GPUs for ray-tracing here.
Turn on DLSS and set to Ultra Performance
DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is a gaming feature designed to optimise games and unlock their full frame-rate potential. It’s essentially artificial intelligence that renders frames at lower resolutions then upscales them to FHD, QHD, or UHD, depending on the target resolution.
If you’re on an RTX graphics card, you can use DLSS, though anyone who’s using Radeon RX cards won’t be able to enjoy this feature.
Read More: Best graphics settings for Hogwarts Legacy PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, including best HDR settings
Reduce graphical quality and textures
This is a simple fix, though frame drops and stuttering could be a result of your hardware not being able to run the game as you’d like. Simply reducing the rendering quality and resolution might make it easier for your PC to sustain a consistent frame-rate in Hogwarts Legacy.
Update drivers to latest release
Neither Nvidia or AMD have yet released official drivers with support for Hogwarts Legacy, though Intel have for their Arc series. That being said, ensuring that you’re updated to the latest graphics card drivers is a sure-fire way to check that your hardware is fully compatible with the game.
