AMD Unveils Radeon Anti-Lag 2 As An “Game-Integrated” Technology: First Launching In Counter Strike 2 & Available As Preview

AMD has relaunched its latency reduction technology in the form of Radeon Anti-Lag 2 which is now available as a technical preview.

Last year, AMD introduced Anti-Lag+, a latency reduction technology that was meant to tackle NVIDIA's Reflex but it backfired hard when players enabling it started getting banned. The issue stemmed from the fact that the technology was implemented on the driver side which modified game files, leading to anti-cheat software getting triggered in the process. Meanwhile, NVIDIA's Reflex software was embedded within the game by working alongside developers which didn't cause any such issues. This means that AMD had to roll back support for Anti-Lag+ within its driver and asked gamers to wait for an update.

Earlier this year, AMD announced that it will be bringing back Anti-Lag+ and now it has finally made its debut in the form of Radeon Anti-Lag 2. The new version is a complete overhaul and instead of following the older driver-level integration technique, it comes integrated within the game files which means that support is going to be specific to the game and the feature won't be supported by all games. While the game support may seem like a downside, the game-side integration means that gamers can now enjoy using Radeon Anti-Lag 2 without worrying about any potential bans in online games.

Today, AMD is not just announcing Radeon Anti-Lag 2 but also making it available to Radeon owners as a technical preview which is supported within Counter-Strike 2. Counter-Strike 2 was the first game where the issues with the previous Anti-Lag+ tech were reported so it's great to see that AMD is starting from that with a fresh start.

With the game-integrated Radeon Anti-Lag 2, the frame alignment is also applied in the game code itself and works in conjunction with the CPU pacing controlled by the driver to allow for better frame syncing. This leads to even lower click-to-response latency than what an in-driver only solution like Radeon Anti-Lag can deliver. Since Radeon Anti-Lag 2 is an in-game technology, it does require game developers to add it to their games, with Counter-Strike 2 being the first.

via AMD

Furthermore, AMD's Radeon Anti-Lag 2 isn't just a fix to the integration method but also excels over Anti-Lag in all ways possible. The company showcased various benchmarks of its Radeon RX 7000 & Radeon 700M iGPUs offering vastly improved latency versus the previous version. It is reported the Radeon Anti-Lag 2 technology brings an average 37% latency reduction when compared with no Anti-Lag enabled.

In terms of compatibility, it looks like AMD has further opened support for Radeon Anti-Lag 2 over Anti-Lag+ which now works on Radeon RX 5000 or higher GPUs and also Ryzen 6000 or higher CPU products.

But that's not all, AMD also plans to release the Radeon Anti-Lag 2 SDK for game developers at GPUOpen and the company also promises support for more games in the future. You can grab Radeon Anti-Lag 2 in the latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.5.1 driver package and the most latest update for Counter-Strike 2 is already live on Steam which will let you access the settings to enable or disable the technology within the game.