Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy is clearly the first AAA game to ssuccess of this year 2023. After the flop The prophesied, Warner Bros. tape fort with its new franchise on the universe ofHarry Potter. Our colleagues from TechPowerUp have realized framerate and VRAM consumption tests according to several configurations and resolutions. Let’s see what gives.
Hogwarts Legacy : it’s beautiful, but it consumes!
Unless you come out of a cave after this start of 2023, you couldn’t have missed the craze around the release on 02/10/2023 of Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy. Without going into details, it is an open-world RPG set in the universe ofHarry Potter. If you want more details, we recommend our monthly gaming journal which talks about it.
To come back to our sheep, to how many FPS can we expect to play and at what definition? TechPowerUp set out to do the work and benchmark the game with multiple graphics cards ranging from la RTX 3050/RX 5700 XT to the mastodons RTX 4090 et RX 7900 XTX and some 1080p Ultra definition up to 2160p Ultra RT.
Remember, however, that to date, AMD still does not offer drivers dedicated to the game. Also remember that the game natively supports all advanced technologies: NVIDIA DLSS, DLAA, DLSS 3 Frame Generation, AMD FSR 2 and Intel XeSS.
For the test configuration used, TPU relied on an Intel Core i9-13900K processor cooled by an AiO 280 mm Arctic Freezer II. Everything is placed on an EVGA Z790 Dark motherboard with 32 GB of Thermaltake TOUGHRAM DDR5-6000 CL36 memory.
Let’s start with the heaviest for our graphics cards, Ray Tracing. We can see that for 4K in RT, NVIDIA is still far ahead of AMD in this area. Afterwards, as said earlier, the drivers not helping AMD, it would be wise to redo the test in a few weeks to see if the gap closes a bit. However, the only AMD standing up to the greens remains the RX 7900 XTX. She has it in her stomach. In any case, we see that the game is extremely greedy (or poorly optimized) and even an RTX 4090 drops to 36.5 FPS ! A shame for a card at 2000 euros… We’re not even talking about the smaller cards, it’s just unplayable.
A 1440p, the highest end barely approaches or exceeds 50 FPS. The mid-range oscillates between 30 and 40 FPS. We are not talking about the low end not suitable for exercise.
Finally in 1080p, all mid-range cards and even Intel get away with it with dignity at least 40 FPS displayed. Even at this definition, the other cards are outdated surely not helped by the astronomical consumption in VRAM, but we will see that later.
As a first point of conclusion, for Ray Tracing, AMD suffers greatly from its lack of drivers. Already that NVIDIA is technologically ahead on the subject, AMD has really missed the mark and this is damaging for such a long-awaited and appreciated game. So we won’t judge AMD’s weak results too much. which will be reviewed later. For Intel, not much to say, they are painfully in the mid-range, never bad, but never good either. What is most surprising is the fact that even cards over 1000 euros do not allow the game to run decently in Ray Tracing. Improvements to drivers and game patches will surely be offered during the life of the game. Now, let’s see the in-game performance rendered at native 1080p, 1440p, and 2160p resolution.
The result in pure rasterization and 4K is still not very encouraging for our high-end cards. All cards above 1000 euros can expect to output at least 50 FPS up to 70 FPS for the RTX 4090. At AMD, only the RX 7900 can claim it. Mid-range cards fight to get their heads out from 30 FPS up to 50 max. Finally the low end do not arrive there.
In 2K we finally get to be able to play properly with a good part of the panel of cards tested. So it seems to be the best definition to release its 60 FPS with. Only the low end will have to settle for 1080p.
In 1080p, no particular discussions to have, any slightly “gamer” card will get by with 60 FPS. Finally a positive point.
In the second stage of conclusion, for pure rasterizationin native resolution therefore, we see that 4K is still within reach of the wealthiest gamers. Outputting just 45 FPS is very difficult on this game, hopefully better drivers and game optimization will improve that. In QHD, many will find themselves there and this may be the most suitable resolution to most machines. In 1080p, no subject. Let’s see the last point before the final conclusion, consumption in VRAM.
The numbers speak for themselves. Like the famous niffler in Harry Potter, this game is a VRAM vacuum cleaner. Consumption is very high and this could partly explain the great difficulty in getting out of FPS even for the largest configurations. Note that playing Ray Tracing will increase your VRAM consumption by 3 to 5 GB all the same and that 10 GB is necessary for normal use.
In conclusion, Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy is a very greedy game and that will overwhelm even the most powerful setups. NVIDIA is doing the best so far on the exercise in terms of FPS in particular, because AMD has skipped the release of its drivers. To be continued when the match can be done fairly. Almost impossible to play in RT currently even with an RTX 4090 which is a shame. VRAM consumption is also very high making FPS output complicated. We would venture to say that the game is probably poorly optimized and that this leaves room both for developers for future patches and for manufacturers for their drivers.