Hogwarts Legacy isn’t using your Ryzen CPU properly
Your Ryzen 7000 series Zen 4 CPU isn't being properly utilized.
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Avalanche Software has just pre-released its 2023 hit game, Hogwarts Legacy. But it seems there are some issues arising already before the game has been properly released to the general public. Hogwarts Legacy’s release is set to take place on February 10th, 2023.
Now read: Best CPU for Hogwarts Legacy
It’s never good when a game doesn’t properly utilize the hardware it’s being run on, but it especially stings when that hardware is as expensive as Zen 4 CPUs are. Games are often released with bugs, and a few here and there are to be expected. But you’d expect the developers to ensure full compatibility with the newest hardware.
Hogwarts’ Legacy performance issues
The game Hogwarts legacy was released on February 10th, and still, users are seeing performance issues from both a GPU and CPU perspective. If you haven’t already, make sure you update your GPU driver (we’re still waiting on AMD for one) and make sure Ray tracing is off.
For some reason, whenever you update a driver and launch Hogwarts Legacy, sometimes Ray tracing likes to miraculously enable itself.
As for the CPU issues, there’s still not much you can do besides hope that the developers come back with a quick fix for the issue. Check below for some ways you can increase the performance of your CPU with very little effort.
Hogwarts Legacy isn’t properly utilizing Zen 4 CPUs
Hogwarts legacy is a fantastic game, there’s no doubt about it. However, there are some hiccups among all this wand-waving if you happen to be running a Zen 4 CPU.
Hardware Unboxed reported this issue over on Twitter
What’s happening is that Hogwarts Legacy is not utilizing the CPU properly. Only 4 of the CPUs cores see usage, and none of them max out. This is an issue because games don’t tend to use all of your CPU’s cores, but the cores it does use see heavy utilization to run the game properly.
HW unboxed and then goes on to comment on the fact that Hogsmeade, one of the most CPU-intensive areas in the game, sees the 7700X paired with an RTX 4090 is limited to 81FPS. Wheres, when paired with the 13900K, HW unboxed reports 160FPS. This is in 1080p ultra settings with Ray Tracing enabled.
This issue likely extends to all Ryzen CPUs, as the core setup is similar throughout the last few generations.
How do I fix the Hogwarts legacy FPS issues?
As of now, there’s not much you can do as this is a developer issue, but there are a few things you could try that can improve FPS generally in games.
Close all CPU-intensive background applications
We know that this is an issue with Hogwarts Legacy not utilizing your CPU properly, but to give yourself the best shot, make sure your CPU isn’t being over-utilized outside of the game.
Disable Hyperthreaded cores for Hogwarts Legacy
This sounds scary, but sometimes you can see a performance improvement in CPU-intensive cores by disabling the threads for a specific application, and only allowing the full CPU cores to process the game.
To do this head into Task Manager and into processes, find the game and Right-Click to set CPU affinity. Now, disable the top end of your cores, If you have an 8-core, 16-thread CPU. Disable core 8 to 16.
You may see a performance increase, as now only the physical cores are active for that specific application. Don;t disabel too many CPU cores, as you may crash the application, or your PC. You can’t do too much damage win here, don’t worry.
Final word
We hope the developers of Hogwarts Legacy fix this CPU error soon as there are probably millions of AMD users out there, who are unable to takefully enjoy this whimsical and visually stunning game, thanks to CPU problems.
It’s likely that the devellopers will update the game soon to salve this issue, we’re sure they’re aware of it.
