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AMD Radeon Anti-Lag 2 Making a Comeback with Counter Strike 2, Company Outs Technical Preview Driver

btarunr

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AMD Radeon Anti-Lag+ is making a comeback with the game that caused it go away in the first instance—Counter Strike 2. The technology is undergoing a rebranding as Anti-Lag 2, to reflect the several under-the-hood changes made by AMD. AMD Radeon Anti-Lag+ was supposed to be AMD's answer to NVIDIA Reflex, a whole-system latency reduction technology that wouldn't just benefit competitive online games such as Counter Strike 2; but also form an essential component of FSR 3 Frame Generation. The technology briefly launched last year before gamers started noticing that the tech would trigger anti-cheat mechanisms in online games, such as the VAC that polices CS 2, forcing AMD to withdraw the technology, and for Valve to manually detect and restore thousands of gamer accounts.

It seems AMD has fixed the way Anti-Lag+ works with the new Anti-Lag 2 technology. The company in particular is testing its stability with Counter Strike 2, so you don't get banned again by VAC. The company worked with Valve to release an update to the game so it supports the tech, and released a special AMD Software Adrenalin Anti-Lag 2 Preview driver based on the recent 24.5.1 version. You'll need the latest patch to CS 2, and this driver to experience the "technical preview" of Anti-Lag 2. The company also released a technology brief of Anti-Lag 2. The most important change with Anti-Lag 2 that sets it apart from the failed Anti-Lag+, is that it is not a driver-based solution, but rather a game engine-based one. This is why you'll need the latest update to CS 2, because it contains the Anti Lag 2 code.



Anti-Lag works to reduce whole-system latency by adjusting the pace at with the CPU and GPU generate frames (to ensure they're generating frames at a rate that ensures the least latency in the graphics rendering stack). Earlier, the driver used to be responsible for this frame alignment, and it had the potential to trigger anti-cheat mechanisms as it would be mistaken for aimbots or wallhacks. Now the game engine is responsible for this frame-pacing. There are some performance benefits to this. AMD had originally opted for a driver-based solution probably because it wouldn't be at the mercy of game developers to implement the tech, and could quickly ramp up the technology's adoption.

To use the tech, simply get Steam to update to the latest version of Counter Strike 2, and download AMD's technology preview driver from this page. Once both are in place, you should see Anti-Lag 2 in the game's settings.

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Nice to see AMD continue to play catchup with Nvidia, hopefully a savy review site gets to compare this to Reflex at some point.
 
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Yeah, that’s what everyone was expecting to happen. The previous solution of injecting code was just asinine.
Ad for comparison with Reflex, I would assume that it will be much of muchness, i.e similar performance tier GPUs running at similar framerate with Reflex and AL2 On will see more or less same latency results.
 
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Bit of a shame AL+ just went away. AMD should have popped a warning advising it might cause issues with some anti-cheat systems and then let the users sort it out.

I'm always good with a driver level option that sits alongside game level integration.

Plenty of older stuff can make use of the driver level implementation and will never get the game level integration.
 

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The most important change with Anti-Lag 2 that sets it apart from the failed Anti-Lag+, is that it is not a driver-based solution, but rather a game engine-based one

Ah this is good. So it should be just like Reflex and Reflex+Boost.

Hopefully Apex Legends integrates it into its version of the Source engine.
 
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Plenty of older stuff can make use of the driver level implementation and will never get the game level integration.

True and unfortunate, but...

Bit of a shame AL+ just went away. AMD should have popped a warning advising it might cause issues with some anti-cheat systems and then let the users sort it out.

Absolutely the fuck not. This is like inventing cancer for your brand name.

The sheer damage it would do is immense in the near term, and incalculable for all future terms.
 
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