AMD’s latest anti-lag feature may brand you as a cheater when playing your preferred competitive shooter

If you are an avid player of competitive shooters and own an AMD Radeon graphics card, you may want to think twice before using the AMD Anti-Lag+ feature exclusive to the Radeon RX 7000-series graphics card. It turns out that enabling this feature could have devastating consequences.

According to AMD, Anti-Lag+ is designed to improve frame syncing by applying frame alignment within the game code itself, resulting in lower latency and better gaming experiences. Given AMD’s reputation for producing top-notch graphics cards, one would expect this feature to work flawlessly.

However, it appears that having Anti-Lag+ enabled on the best AMD graphics cards can lead to automatic bans in competitive shooters such as Counter-Strike 2, Call of Duty, and Apex Legends. This is especially problematic for Counter-Strike 2, as these bans are notoriously difficult to reverse. The developers even went so far as to warn players to disable the feature while playing.

TechRadar has reached out to AMD for comment and will provide updates on this story as soon as a statement is received.

Why is this happening?

The issue seems to stem from the way the Anti-Lag+ feature “detours engine DLL functions,” which resembles a cheat program. Essentially, the feature intercepts the information between the game engine and the display adapter, manipulating and replacing functions. This is akin to wiretapping a phone call and using the information obtained to create cheats while bypassing the game’s security measures.

Not only does this result in bans, but it also causes significant performance issues in other PC titles, including Fortnite and Overwatch 2. Fortunately, players can disable the feature by pressing ALT + L or customizing the hotkey assignment in AMD Radeon Software.

While this issue only affects a limited number of games supported by the Adrenaline Edition version 23.30.1 driver, players should still exercise caution.

AMD is struggling

AMD has been introducing new tools that work with Anti-Lag+, such as the ability for its Adrenalin graphics drivers to measure system lag on PC. This feature aims to compete with Nvidia’s PC Latency measurement.

However, besides the issues with the anti-lag technology, it is worth noting that this feature is currently only supported by a small number of PC games, with only 12 games offering compatibility. This indicates that AMD still has a long way to go if they hope to catch up with Nvidia in this aspect.

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