Radeon Anti Lag – Does it suck?
|Back when AMD first announced their “Anti-Lag” feature at E3 2019, a lot of people, including me, where skeptical. Now that the new NAVI based RX 5700 and 5700XT GPUs are out, I thought instead of doing a review or comparison of the cards themselves, I’d start off with a look at this new feature.
So in this video I want to work out two things, first, does anti-lag even do anything, like at all, and if it does, the second thing is, can you actually notice a difference or is it more a “technically its better but not really” kinda thing.
So first we have to establish if it does anything, that’s the easy part. A while ago a soldered an LED to the left click switch of a mouse to test this kind of thing entirely. Now on AMD’s slide deck from E3 they said you can expect anywhere from 20 to 35% decrease in total system response time, but does it actually do anything?
I was testing in CS:GO, a game where response times actually matter quite a lot, with a TN, 144hz monitor for good measure. I also tested with an RTX 2070 as a control, and tested at 60hz too, just to make sure. The test is from when the LED on the mouse goes out, to when you see the front of the pistol lift in recoil on screen, over multiple shots. So, what were the results?
Well, as expected, 60Hz is slower than 144hz, but only by 1ms or 2 on average, but the real answer is, yes anti-lag works. Testing with the 5700XT at 144hz, with anti-lag off the average response time was 29ms – for reference an RTX 2070 is 26ms, so pretty close, but with anti-lag enabled, it dropped to 19ms average. That’s about a third faster.
So, anti-lag works. But it is any use? To test that, I got my partner to enable or disable it without me knowing which is which, then I played for a bit and made a guess if it was enabled or disabled. At 60Hz, it seemed to make a noticeable enough difference, that I guessed all three correctly. At 144Hz though, I really couldn’t tell. We ran the 144Hz test 3 times, so 9 total runs, and each time I only ever got 1 or at most 2 out of 3 right. Now that doesn’t mean it still won’t help – lowered input lag is always better, and this test didn’t track accuracy, or any other in game metrics like kills, or even my reaction time based on this, so this test certainly isn’t foolproof.
The conclusion here is that AMD has done some impressive work here, and if you have any of their new GPUs – or their old ones for any DX11 games (since only navi cards will do dx9 titles) – you should probably enable this feature and enjoy the free benefits – even if it can have a slight impact on your in-game FPS.
AMD’s Radeon Anti-Lag feature was launched at E3 2019 – but does it actually do anything? Does it help in game? Let’s test it and find out!
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TechteamGB assumes no liability for damage, misuse or misunderstanding of the information contained in this video. Use this information at your own risk. TechteamGB cannot guarantee any particular result from the information contained in this video, and all information was presented as correct as of filming. TechteamGB accepts no liability for information being proven incorrect after the creation of the video, and all information should be taken as opinion and guidance, not fact. This video was not sponsored by anyone, and TechteamGB does not accept monetary – or non-monetary – benefits to alter opinions or results.