Lag is the bane and the scapegoat of PC gamers since time immemorial. There are various ways to reduce it, including some surprisingly effective local software like Nvidia Reflex. AMD tried its hand at the same trick with its Radeon Anti-Lag+ tool…but soon found itself the target of gamer wrath when the tool mistakenly tripped Valve’s anti-cheat system and got players banned. The tool was swiftly disabled and hasn’t been seen since, but an AMD executive says it’s coming back soon.
Said executive is Frank Azor, AMD’s chief gaming architect, whom you might recognize from PCWorld live coverage and The Full Nerd podcast. In response to a question about Radeon Anti-Lag+ returning on X (we used to call it Twitter, we still do, but we used to too), Azor said “Yes, coming soon.” The interaction was spotted by Tom’s Hardware.
We’ve not seen hide nor hair of Anti-Lag+ since October of last year, which is a bummer, because it’s some pretty cool tech. But its solution injects some proprietary files into games on your system instead of being baked in from the developer, like Nvidia Reflex. This allowed Radeon Anti-Lag+ to theoretically work with any online game…but was also detected as user tampering by Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC), notably in the insanely popular Counter-Strike 2. Temporary player bans resulted, followed by AMD stripping the feature out of its Adrenalin driver package.
Azor declined to say exactly how “soon” we can expect to see Anti-Lag+ again. The less complex Anti-Lag (sans +) is still available, but it’s less effective and doesn’t quite compete with Nvidia Reflex. We’re in a bit of a lull for graphics card development at the moment with neither company expected to release next-gen GPUs until 2025, so any advantage either side can tout will be a small but crucial marketing win.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.