Anti-Lag+ has been missing from AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition since 2023, following difficulties with some anti-cheat measures in games resulting in player bans. Now, AMD is launching a new and improved version of its latency reduction feature, under the guise of Anti-Lag 2. Unlike its predecessor, though, Anti-Lag 2 requires developers to integrate the feature into games, with Counter-Strike 2 leading the charge during the tech’s preview period.
Frame rates aside, Nvidia Reflex is a core reason that many consider GeForce GPUs as the best graphics cards for Counter-Strike 2. After all, the rigs used in the first major tournament for the game used GeForce RTX 4080 cards. However, Anti-Lag 2 could finally see AMD finally stop lagging (pun intended) behind its competitor. While driver-based Anti-Lag has remained available to Radeon cards since 2019, this new version features several key improvements to further reduce latency.
As AMD explains in a community post, Anti-Lag 2 includes the benefits of its predecessor by controlling the pace of your CPU to align with your GPU, reducing queued work and consequently latency. However, the feature goes one step further by applying this alignment to the game code itself as well. Anti-Lag+ did this too via Radeon drivers, leading to VAC bans, but AMD has worked with Valve to integrate Anti-Lag 2 natively into Counter-Strike 2.
The first benchmarks for Anti-Lag 2, provided by AMD, paint a compelling picture. Compared to Anti-Lag, latency falls by 5ms with Anti-Lag 2 enabled across all test configurations. Although, APUs such as Ryzen 7 8700G see a smaller fall of 2ms. However you slice it, though, latency is lower across the board and every millisecond counts when it comes to competitive shooters.
You can try AMD Anti-Lag 2 for yourself, providing you have a Radeon RX 5000 series graphics card or newer. The preview driver can be found here and should enable the feature by default in Counter-Strike 2 the next time you start the game up.
AMD plans to release the Anti-Lag 2 SDK soon which should see more developers adopt the standard into their games. While it’s a shame that it seems the wider driver-based approach that AMD initially pursued is being abandoned for a per-game solution, it’s great to see Radeon sharpen its competitiveness against GeForce when it comes to features.
If you’re looking to push your Counter-Strike 2 frame rates to the max, check out our GeForce RTX 4080 Super review. Alternatively, if you’re more red-blooded than green, our Radeon RX 7900 XTX review is worth a read. Just don’t forget to pair these graphics cards with a suitably powerful processor, so give our Ryzen 7 7800X3D review a looksee too.