Technology so good it gets you banned.
AMD’s PR blunders continue yet again after the discovery that their Anti-Lag+ feature, which had only just been recently introduced for usage in Counter-Strike 2 is causing innocent players to be hit with VAC bans.
It’s always one step forward and two steps backward for AMD who continually manage to make matters worse for themselves regardless of whether they address issues or ignore them, such as how the entire tech press threw shade at them over the notion of AMD “bribing” developers into forbidding the adoption of NVIDIA’s proprietary black box technology in their games.
Anti-Lag+ is a unique feature “exclusively” for the Radeon RX 7000 series, it’s designed to further reduce input lag and enhance the overall gaming experience over their standard Anti-Lag solution.
Anti-Lag+ is a feature that enhances gaming performance by optimizing frame alignment within the game’s code. Its main goal is to minimize the delay between player input and on-screen display, resulting in a more responsive and immersive gaming experience.
AMD only just released Adrenalin 23.10.1 offering support for Anti-Lag+ inside of Counter-Strike 2.
And apparently AMD achieves this through the manipulation of DLL functions, according to the official Counter-Strike Twitter account, but you would think that a large corporation such as Valve would proactively be working with their Steam Deck SoC supplier to actually whitelist AMD’s recent Adrenalin drivers so shit like this doesn’t happen but apparently not, because Anti-Lag+ does at least need some limited form of developer support to actually integrate.
By reducing the processing time for each frame, Anti-Lag+ ensures that player actions are synchronized with on-screen visuals more effectively, it’s quite advantageous in fast-paced and competitive games such as Counter-Strike that demand fast reaction times and precise timing.
With the likes of AMD’s Anti-Lag+ and NVIDIA’s Reflex which optimizes the rendering pipeline to reduce the time it takes for a frame to be rendered and displayed on the screen, players can gain a competitive edge by experiencing reduced input lag, allowing for more accurate and timely actions.
Naturally, given the sort of mindshare and landscape that heavily favors NVIDIA, this sort of blunder whether it be predominately Valve and AMD’s fault for their failure of actually working together or the fact that Valve’s Anti-Cheat is a worthless piles of shit, hundreds of individuals have rightfully taken the chance to bastardize the company once again pushing the narrative that AMD’s drivers are faulty.
This has been a complete and utter blunder for AMD’s reputation, which is a far too common sight to behold in the current age, despite the actual cause of this problem likely stemming from Valve themselves, however they of course escape any wrongdoing (as per usual) as the entirety of social media are instead gaslighting AMD.
Thankfully those banned will eventually be unbanned, but AMD cannot help but always find themselves in these sorts of scenarios that sway public opinion over towards the 90% market share tyrant, continually doing damage to AMD’s brand image and the reception of Radeon which continues to falter in terms of market share despite offering arguably better hardware for far greater value.
