Some "Hogwarts Legacy" early access players are having problems with the game running smoothly on their PCs, even with hardware that meets the minimum system requirements.

The open-world game will be available to everyone tomorrow (open in new tab) with a first-day patch, but those who purchased the $70 deluxe edition can already play it. According to Warner Bros, Friday's patch will include fixes for game crashes, stuttering, and lag, as well as other performance improvements. However, the game currently seems to be struggling on a variety of hardware configurations.

The most common problem seems to be stuttering, and many games (not all; see below) seem to be suffering from it! (open in new tab)), a common problem. When a scene in a game starts, everything is choppy, as if the PC can't handle it. Also, sometimes the scenes are out of sync with the voice acting.

Some players experience no stuttering outside of their scene, but our reviewer, Morgan Park, experienced consistent stuttering (open in a new tab) when moving between Hogwarts towers. Other players have reported encountering hittings while running through the open world. Assuming this is a shader compilation issue, it seems to be worst when entering new areas. So far, it doesn't seem to matter how low I turn down my PC's performance or graphics settings.

The minimum system requirements for the game recommend an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon RX 470 with an Intel Core i5 660 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400. As for minimum requirements, anyone who has built a medium-end PC in the past five years should be able to handle it fairly well; a thread on the Hogwarts Legacy subreddit (open in new tab) suggests an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 or Intel Core i9 13900K and others have reported problems with better hardware, such as.

"I have an RTX 4090 and an Intel 13900k, but it crashes while compiling shaders and won't even launch the game," wrote reddit user Chromatik (opens in new tab). I have tried a dozen "fixes" from various forums.

Fixes are out there, but the results may vary from person to person; Steam user Klånylol2.0's (opens in new tab) Nvidia DLSS fix has the most support. The game uses an older version of Nvidia's AI video rendering technology, which can be updated manually. Many commenters report that most of the stuttering and fps issues have been fixed, but not everyone is seeing success.

For other performance issues, including crashes, you may want to try lowering your graphics settings or updating your graphics card drivers. We recommend lowering the Global Quality preset to something like Medium and changing the upscale type to Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR 2. Doing so may allow your PC to gain the overhead needed for the game. Otherwise, you may have to wait for tomorrow's patch or check the official forums (opens in new tab) to see if anyone finds a fix.