16gb RAM vs. 32gb RAM contrast in gameplay is HUGE

[Explorerbeyondthemap]

Just wanted to report my experience so far with the game for those who may be having issues with memory.

I don't know a lot about troubleshooting corrupt files, etc.

However, I can say now with 100% certainty that 32gb RAM is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for this game to run smoothly.

About a week ago I attempted to play the game with just 16gb. It was a stuttery, jerky mess. I couldn't stay in the game for more than five seconds before it crashed to the main menu. Never was able to stay in game, it kept auto-exiting. Unplayable.

Today, with an upgrade of RAM to 32gb, I made it through all the first cut scenes and the entire first quest, made it to Hogwarts and the game ran FLAWLESSLY. I got 50-60fps through all of the gameplay. All the spell effect animations, combat animations, haptic feedback on the controller worked perfectly. There was not one stutter during the first quest, and maybe only one or two very brief stutters during one of the cut scene transitions.

When I'm in the game, the RAM usage has gone as high as 17.1, so clearly it's going to exceed 16gb systems.

And I'm not running anything close to an uber rig whatsoever. I've got an AMD Ryzen 2700, Nvidia RTX 2070 Super, and as I said, 32gb of RAM. I also bought a SSD but haven't put the game files on it yet. So far, the game seems to be loading and performing very well despite it still being stored on the internal hard drive.

I also happened to need a new internal hard drive, which I installed along with a fresh install of Windows 10. Don't know how much difference that made, but as I said doubling the RAM took this game from unplayable to flawless performance.

[spicy little monkey]

Runs fine on my laptop with 16gb RAM. I do get occasional microstutters but nowhere near unplayable.

it's more an issue if you're running ultra settings

[Psyringe]

Some people are reporting issues despite having 32GB RAM, so it doesn't seem to be a surefire solution. But yeah, the personal experience of my lady and me is in the same vein.

On my own machine (RTX 4090, Ryzen 7 7700X, 2x16 GB DDR5-6000 RAM CL30, 4 TB NVMe SSD PCIe 4.0), the game always ran smoothly in 4K even at Ultra settings and with raytracing on. Framerates are relatively low, but don't drop below 60, and personally I don't see much difference between 60 and 144 in any game. No stutters except in two isolated situations, both were Merlin trials.

My lady's machine is a GTX 1660 Ti, Ryzen 2600, 2x16 GB DDR4 RAM, 500 GB SATA SSD, and the game ran smoothly for her at high settings on a 1080p screen.

[Explorerbeyondthemap]

Originally posted by El Sin Nombre:

Runs fine on my laptop with 16gb RAM. I do get occasional microstutters but nowhere near unplayable.

it's more an issue if you're running ultra settings

I've got a bit of an older LCD monitor that only supports a max of 1920 x 1080, so I'm running the game at I guess medium/medium high? The game looks amazing even at just 1080, but as my original post says it wouldn't run with 16gb for me. So your laptop must process the game way better than my rig does as far as memory goes?

[Cyrix]

Just because you're currently using 17GB of RAM doesn't mean you need it. If you have spare RAM, Windows will leave files in RAM that aren't currently being used, just in case they're needed later.

[spicy little monkey]

Originally posted by Explorerbeyondthemap:

Originally posted by El Sin Nombre:

Runs fine on my laptop with 16gb RAM. I do get occasional microstutters but nowhere near unplayable.

it's more an issue if you're running ultra settings

I've got a bit of an older LCD monitor that only supports a max of 1920 x 1080, so I'm running the game at I guess medium/medium high? The game looks amazing even at just 1080, but as my original post says it wouldn't run with 16gb for me. So your laptop must process the game way better than my rig does as far as memory goes?

I'm running the game at medium/high quality 1080p.

my laptop has a Ryzen 7 5800h, 16gb ram and Nvidia RTX 3050m 4gb.
Driver 516.94

[UdNeedaMiracle]

It's less about the quantity of RAM and more about the performance of it. Your total allocated RAM is 17GB but there isn't actually that much in use. If you have nothing else open on your computer other than the game and maybe Discord it can run fine with 16GB, unless you are running out of VRAM because your settings are too high and your GPU has low VRAM or you are using raytracing. If you're not doing either of those things, 16GB is a perfectly acceptable quantity to run the game.

The reason the upgrade seems to help so many people has more to do with what it does for performance. With slower memory, the CPU spends more time waiting on information it needs that is being stored in RAM. That time spent waiting is time that could be used for processing, so having faster memory alleviates CPU bottlenecking by allowing it to waste less time.

An ideal RAM configuration would be both dual channel and dual rank. 8GB DDR4 modules are practically never going to be dual rank, and if you are running 1x16GB you can't be running in dual channel. So users with 1x16GB that upgrade to 2x16GB are going from single channel to dual channel, and users with 2x8GB that upgrade to 4x8GB are going from (if properly configured in motherboard slots) dual channel single rank to dual channel dual rank.

Slow memory, like 3200MHz CL16 in dual rank will match faster memory (like 4000MHz cl15) that's being run in single rank. This is where the benefit comes from.

I've personally tested it in this game, going from 3200MHz CL16 2x8GB to 4x8GB yields a big performance gain. Going from 4133MHz CL16 2x8GB to 4x8GB does nothing.

In my case, even having 32GB of very fast memory isn't enough to overcome the stuttering this game has.

[spicy little monkey]

Originally posted by UdNeedaMiracle:

In my case, even having 32GB of very fast memory isn't enough to overcome the stuttering this game has.

That's because they are using UE4 and UE4 has a lot of problems.

[WilliamHenry]

I can report game runs fine on mostly the highest settings using an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and 16 DB of DDR 4 using a Nvidia 1650 Super video card. I've honestly seen stutter twice in almost 60 hours play once when antivirus kicked off and the other time an auto update kicked off.
Just my experience. Not sure why 32GB of Ram is absolutely essential for you but it's not for everyone. Congrats on the upgrade though.

[felixpoop]

I run it great on a RTX 3060 mobile/i7-10750h/16GB RAM/512GB SSD at 1080p w/o RT on Ultra preset. So far the onliest 'problem' is the pause that sometimes happens when going through doors while the new area loads. I've only had the chance to briefly explore the open world, but it ran well there. There is the slightest perceptible jaggedness when moving around in Hogsmeade.

I have been debating expanding to 32 for a while, though.

[M]

absolutely essential for what? 4k? Im playing in fullHD with 16 gb RAM, high settings and I have no issues. but to make my post sound less offending, I use forced fullscreen for HWL.

go to:

AppData\Local\Hogwarts Legacy\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor

open with editor:

GameUserSettings.ini

find and edit this values:

ResolutionSizeX=1920
ResolutionSizeY=1080
LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeX=1920
LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeY=1080

FullscreenMode=0
LastConfirmedFullscreenMode=0

[SenMithrarin85]

the only thing 32gb ram is needed for is ultra textures. with them on high, 16gb is enough.

ram also has zero influence on the stuttering which once again, is due to epics piss poor engine

[ercarp]

Until now the game ran fine for two weeks with just 16 GB RAM so no, I wouldn't say it's essential. Maybe if you have a million background applications eating up your RAM when you're playing, but otherwise no.

The CTDs happening now are a bug introduced by the recent patch. Don't go wasting money upgrading your PC just to get around a bug...

1440p, second highest graphics, RT off. RTX 3070, Ryzen 7 5800X, 16 GB RAM, Windows 11. 100-160 FPS (average 120-140 FPS). No major stutters anywhere except Hogsmeade and some parts of the castle

[Cumbusted]

I've got 64GB and I still get a lot of performance issues.
Setting things to high instead of Ultra seems to fix nearly everything.
Hopefully more patches are on the way, the graphical difference isn't that much though.
RT still needs a lot of work on its implementation.

[Maverick81PL]

Originally posted by El Sin Nombre:

Runs fine on my laptop with 16gb RAM. I do get occasional microstutters but nowhere near unplayable.

it's more an issue if you're running ultra settings

Thats weard, on my system game runs almost fine (microstutters are in game but have no issue with ram or vram) dont wknow why?

I play in 1080p on ULTRA with RTX but without DLSS scaling but with DLSS Frame Generator only.

When I switch to higher resolution 1440p or higher stutters are insane...

But ram is same (around 12GB to 14GB usage)

AMD RYZEN 5 5600X
GIGABYTE AORUS B450 PRO
DDR4 16GB RAM 3200MHz cl16 HYPERX LED
MSI NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti

[Kinski]

I updated my Nvidia drivers and since then it's running far better than before and more smoothly. My specs:

AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT
ASRock X370 Taichi
Corsair Vengeance 16GB RAM 3200Mhz
MSI Ventus RTX 2080Ti

I play at 1440p with everything at ultra. Only RTX is turned off completelly.
Stuttering isn't gone completelly but since I updated the drivers it is running smoothly at 60-100fps ninety percent of the time.