ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC
Excellent air cooling solution
Pushes performance above the rest of the selection
Updated design cooling and aesthetically focused
A more expensive choice over the rest of the picks and will cost a lot to run
Looking to enjoy your wizarding experience, then here is how to optimize it
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As Hogwarts Legacy launched and you want to make the most of your experience, then you may first want to fiddle with the options. So what are the best graphics settings for Hogwarts Legacy on PC?
With the game set back in the 1800s, you take control of your own magic user in the wizarding world. So as you venture into the olden times, we look at how to get the best fidelity and framerate out of it. Although you may find some issues other than settings in the game. At the moment, there are reports of it crashing during shaders as well as possible driver issues for the game.
The game has many graphics features to take advantage of. One of which is ray tracing, as a further improvement to the quality and look of the game. But it does come at a performance cost. Here’s how to turn off ray tracing on Hogwarts Legacy if it’s causing performance drops you don’t want to deal with.
To combat that, you can lower your settings, but that may not be that effective. So there is also the addition of upscale. With both DLSS 2 and FSR 2 included, which will get you better framerates. These run the game at lower resolutions upscale them with AI or not and give higher framerates doing so.
There is also the usual inclusion of resolution, window modes, anti-aliasing, and after-effects. Whilst graphically there is a range of qualities but also the benchmark that will automatically set the options for your hardware.
We are going to cover a variety of graphic settings on Hogwarts Legacy to ensure that no matter your PC’s hardware, you can run the game optimally.
No matter what GPU you’re running even with the best GPU for Hogwarts Legacy, there are some options that will set back your performance. One such choice is the framerate lock. It is best to match it to your refresh rate at the least. But otherwise, we usually set this to uncapped so you can get the most out of your card.
The same goes for Vsync, which will limit the framerate to the refresh rate as well. So turning that off will unlock the full potential. There are also some personal preference options to decide on. Such as motion blur, which we personally turn off, depth of field, chromatic aberration, and film grain. These affect the final look of the game but will also affect some performance.
For a lower-end graphics card, you’re looking at a likely lower resolution and low preset setting. But this game doesn’t seem to change too much with changing that setting. And changing from ultra to low improved the framerate by 31 FPS. But in the large view of things, there isn’t as much of a change in the quality. So it might be passable to get the most out of it.
Now if you wanted ray tracing you’re likely going to have to upscale that gameplay. As in our testing, we save the FPS drop by nearly half by turning on the feature. So with a low-end option that would reduce it quite far. And so DLSS or FSR is going to be a good option. This would even double the performance but might bring down the overall quality look of the game. The RTX 3060 is likely to get around 80FPS, based on our 144 with an RTX 3080. Which still gives you a good range of options to increase resolutions and the potential to push it further.
Now, the RTX 3080 is the popular choice of the Ampere generation. With plenty of power behind it, there was nothing that could hold it back. But at high resolution and quality, there are still some lower framerates. With 4K ray tracing, the FPS drops to 30FPS on Ultra. So there is a lot more to be desired to enjoy the gameplay. That means you’re going to have to use upscaling if you’re set on using ray tracing. Otherwise, 1440p high is a good setting for smooth gameplay. However, for something higher, you would have to drop down the resolution for better performance. This will give you better stability in performance and a smooth experience.
Now there’s nothing to hold back the performance of the RTX 4090. So there is nothing that should hold you back from the top end. 4K Ultra quality and ray tracing should be in your grasp. Even just using the top end of the upscale just to get the few extra frames for a smoother experience. Which is what you would expect from the top choice of card. And that should certainly net you around 60 FPS based on what the 3080 can achieve.
Excellent air cooling solution
Pushes performance above the rest of the selection
Updated design cooling and aesthetically focused
A more expensive choice over the rest of the picks and will cost a lot to run
Great cooling solution that improves thermals and fan curves over reference
Improved power management from an experienced brand
High quality build and overclocked for top tier performance
A slightly more expensive option for its better performance and quality
There are a few basics you may want to look at, firstly, ensure you are running the game in your native resolution. If there isn’t an option for this in the menu, just take a look at your monitor specs and match them in-game. Next, you can turn down graphical settings, and depending on your hardware, you can turn Ray Tracing off, or enable DLSS/ FSR to double your performance. The upscaling will allow your game to run at a lower resolution and then still display it at a higher resolution. Which does reduce the quality of the graphics but does make it more enjoyable.
It is quite likely you may need to use upscaling options in Hogwarts Legacy for better performance. As the game is quite intensive, for the best fidelity and resolutions, or older less powerful hardware you might have to make sacrifices. The upscaling works by rendering the game at lower resolutions and scaling it up with some effects, either AI or not. So you do get some performance but at the cost of quality.
Ray tracing is a great feature to have in Hogwarts Legacy, given the beautiful indoor and outdoor environments. There’s plenty of light to play around with too with spells such as Lumos or Incendio. Regardless, if ray tracing is tanking your performance, you should definitely play with it. It’s a nice feature to have, but it doesn’t affect gameplay.
The game gets incredibly demanding at higher resolutions, especially if you want to run at 4K. You’re going to need the very best graphics cards on the market – such as the RTX 4090 or RX 7900 XTX. Running at ultra settings and making use of ray tracing at high resolutions like this requires the best. The high-end GPUs of the RTX 30-series are also worth checking out, but you may need to sacrifice quality.