Hogwarts Legacy PC Optimization Guide - Best RTX Graphics Settings for 60 FPS

hello guys this is Matt and welcome to another optimization guide this time we have the long-awaited Hogwarts Legacy and this is a title that has a very interesting extremes on one hand you've got this amazing and spectacular rendition of The Wizarding World and you can really feel the passion poured out on this game on the other hand the performance of this game is a mess and optimizing for performance is by far the hardest I have ever done but after so many hours of tweaking the settings I can now share with you my optimization guide here are my specs to help you set your expectations for your own Hardware the objective of this guide is for us to hit a consistent 60 plus FPS while preserving visual quality and maintaining a smooth experience is that really achievable let's find out there are two sets of performance problems in this game one is GPU related and the other is CPU related take note of your GPU usage and vram is your usage nearing 99 or stays at 99 most of the time is your vram consumption getting near the vram allocation of your GPU if you answered yes to any one of those questions then you are probably GPU bottlenecked if you answered no and your GPU usage is well below 90 and hovers around 40 to 80 percent then you're probably CPU bots on it so kindly use the timestamps down below for now let's address the first set because GPU related performance is predictable and consistent first we have effects quality and list controls the density and complexity of light particles casted by magic effects in other light sources as the amount of particles decrease along the quality levels there is a corresponding performance gain the biggest jump to Performance is moving from Ultra to high also effects quality controls the accuracy of light balance on some surfaces and this gives a sizable performance boost one set to high like this example look at how this specular sheen on this rusted part of the floor has now been simplified when moving down to high this also reduces the reflected color details on the floor as you can see here and additionally this setting also controls the presentation of SSR in some reflective surfaces just like this floor where for some odd reason high quality looks to be more defined than Ultra this could be due to the added accuracy of light dispersion when using Ultra so I'm Gonna Leave This to you you can choose old trap you want a more natural looking image but going to high can give you more defined Reflections in a very substantial boost as well but if you're having frame rate drops due to particle effects when casting spells then you can use medium next up we have post process quality with the most noticeable visual change being ambient occlusion moving down the quality values will reduce the amount of contact Shadows from objects which will ultimately result in a flat looking image just like the example here notice how the paintings look more detached and floaty as we move down to low but this can really help us in our performance with the biggest gain found between high and medium however as you can see you will be sacrificing a lot of depth and complexity to the image especially indoors but it still comes down to what you prefer for me I will use high to favor performance let's look at Shadows next and this one is an easy choice just go with high or ultra's performance gains are very small and going down to medium will make casted Sun Shadows look like this notice how the Shadows have now become a blurry mess and they're updating in a very choppy rate would you really want this for just two additional FPS come on man next let's go outside the castle so we can see the impact of foliage quality moving down the quality levels will reduce the density and variety of vegetation in the environment with the biggest gains coming from toggling high to medium moving down from Ultra to high can also give you comparable gains however choosing low is not just worth it because the performance gain is very small and sometimes inconsistent for this one I recommend either high or medium now let's look back at Hogwarts Castle to check view distance Quality Moving down from Ultra to high will reduce the draw distance of vegetation and terrain but the geometric quality of the castle is still preserved with some mild performance gains now moving down to medium is interesting because not only is there no FPS benefit but the only visual change I can see is the removal of the small Watch Tower linings on your left the rest is exactly the same however moving down to low will not only give you the biggest performance gain in this setting but it will also render the castle as a low LOD mesh with textures being simplified in the geometric complexity of the architecture noticeably reduced for this one I recommend using High let's move ahead to texture quality this will be the biggest contributor in your vram consumption and as you can see in this 1440p comparison Ultra textures will increase your vrm consumption by more than 2 gigabytes as per the difference in image quality it's really interesting because the OWN the noticeable difference is when you move from high to medium this means that Ultra and high will look the same while medium and low also look the same take note guys that this ground texture is the most obvious difference I can find and if you're normally playing the game the texture detail is very similar from Ultra to low like this example the details on the boar statue the flower the concrete pot and even the low pillar is just indistinguishable between Ultra and low this is a no-brainer for gpus with less than 12 gigabytes of RAM only use low textures if you have room to spare however use high textures because Ultra is just a waste our last settings for our GPU bound group are material quality fog quality and Sky quality I placed him last here because they're not worthy to be talked about they don't bring anything substantial to our performance and tweaking them just damages image quality build out any significant gains just like material quality over here we're turning to low just simplifies the material details of these floor panels and also Sky quality which just turns clouds into mush without significant performance gains unlike Assassin's Creed Odyssey if you can recall back in 2018 for these settings you can just use high for all three of them so that's it guys those are just the settings you need to tweak if you are GPU bound oh you want to know about RTX okay well it is definitely GPU related but I'm gonna be honest here guys I do not recommend RTX at all unless you want your gameplay experience to be a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation and not only that but the image will actually look worse in my opinion let's look at RTX Reflections for example this is probably the most noticeable RTX setting and some might find this attractive especially in certain angles like this where raytraced Reflections on Ultra quality do look impressive in reflecting the immediate environment as compared to just SSR however RTX Reflections in general look very messy and shimmery to me even in Ultra quality just like this one here look at how RTX exhibit crawling artifacts within the raytraced reflections the fact that this is already on Ultra quality and SSR looks more stable hmm and most importantly RTX Reflections just ruined the art style of Hogwarts Castle to my eyes the fine details on the floor in the intricate artwork in the surfaces are now obstructed with those moving and crawling artifacts and they do not look like natural floors anymore but shiny mirrors instead also water Reflections still use SSR either way so this setting is just not worth the performance sacrifice to me next we go to RTX Shadows which further increases the accuracy of Shadow rendering just like this tree on screen notice how the three shadows get softer and more diffused as they move away from the source object it also adds fine Shadows to all physical objects in this game no matter how small they are for this example your hood now projects its own shadow to your body but the performance trade-off is so huge and it's really not that noticeable unless you are taking screenshots so I recommend turning this off as well lastly we have rcx AO and this time you choose for yourself which do you think looks better image number one or image number two next image number one or image number two if you voted number two for both comparisons then turn off RTX AO because image number one is with Ray tracing AO if you want to choose the best upscaling method go with dlss here's a clear example not only does dlss give you the best performance but it is also the only solution that can resolve Shadow flickering within Alpha transparency such as hair and leaves in this example look at how there's busy and noisy movement within this tree model that even dlaa cannot resolve if you have an Nvidia GPU only consider dlss if you have an AMD card then use FSR 2.0 so that's it guys those are our GPU bound settings now let's address this one big elephant in the room the stuttering in this game there are three kinds of stutters or frame rate drops the first happens when you're simply moving around in lots of small assets are loaded in the second occurs during door transitions where a large chunk of game Space is loaded in and the third is triggered when simply moving your camera around if you have your frame time graph displayed take note of how erratic and spiky this line becomes when you move around the world our ideal experience should be that this graph will be a smooth and a straight line I've got some bad news however as there is no current solution to completely eradicate this problem what we can do for now though is focus on the FPS drops we can control so we can mitigate them and lessen their impacts on our experience this is where our CPU bound settings come in in its main culprit population quality this single setting is responsible for punishing your CPU which then lowers your GPU usage drastically if you are using Ultra preset in your GPU usage is still below the 60s turning down population quality will improve GPU usage and significantly increase their frame rates in the process just like the example you're seeing on screen also the FPS drops that occur when simply moving the camera around this is drastically reduced by lowering this setting the unfortunate side effect however is that this hugely affects atmosphere as the number of NPCs are reduced and the subter part is that these substantial benefits come from moving down to medium or low which just hurts atmosphere even further also adjusting the settings outside the graphics menu affects GPU usage first we have the fov slider this increases the demand for the CPU as more elements are displayed on screen but moving this to the lowest value may feel claustrophobic and quite restrictive to your eyes I recommend just sticking to the default fov for this one lastly please turn off Nvidia reflex guys as setting this to on plus boost will degrade your performance by a significant margin so that's it guys we finally reach the end of our optimization Quest once again here are our optimized settings effects quality on high material quality on high fog quality on high Sky quality on high foliage quality and medium post process quality on high Shadows on high or Ultra texture on only either high or low view distance on high population quality on medium or low already tracing disabled and choose either quality Nvidia dlss or AMD FSR 2.0 now let's see how our optimize settings compare to the ultra preset first let's test an indoors in comparison look at how vram is now properly managed which fixes those extreme hitching that happens when it gets filled during area transitions [Music] let's move to an outdoor scene the most obvious difference on here would be the reduction of voltage density but for me I think it still looks good we also benefit hugely from the proper vrm consumption as Ultra preset once again suffers from those severe stutters as you can see right now however if you can notice our frame times are not exactly the smoothest especially in hogsmeade this stutter is just unplayable so I recommend capping your frame rate do not use the in-game limiter guys as this has very bad frame pacing instead use rtss to cap your frame rate to the lowest FPS value you can observe for example if your general frame rate is higher than 60 but drops within the 60fps range then cap your FPS to 60. this will ensure that drops won't go out of range as much as possible in this example I am capping at 120 FPS and look at the difference between the in-game limiter and rtss rtss just perfectly smoothens our frame times and results in a very solid straight line unfortunately stutters will still occur as they are inherent to the game's optimization in hogsmeade for example spikes in frame rate are still present but are at least reduced significantly it's sad to say but this is the best we can do for now I have already tried other fixes such as adding the game's exe as an exception to the control flow guard but it's not really effective for me so that's it guys I hope this video helps you out please do tell me your experience with the game and if there's anything I missed that helps performance please do share them down in the comments section thank you very much guys take care and bye bye

Channel: Matthew's Couch

Views: 18,755

Keywords: hogwarts legacy best graphics settings, hogwarts legacy pc best graphics settings, hogwarts legacy pc performance guide, hogwarts legacy performance review, hogwarts legacy fps drops fix, hogwarts legacy fix stuttering, hogwarts legacy best rtx settings, hogwarts legacy graphics settings breakdown, hogwarts legacy pc optimization guide, hogwarts legacy digital foundry, hogwarts legacy pc performance fix, hogwarts legacy pc optimized settings, Hogwarts legacy fps boost pc

Id: KV1QgY9R7Dg

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/lastreadlastyear]

It never is apparently