Disadvantages to Radeon Anti-Lag? Why not enabled by-default?

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by Deleted member 282649, Aug 1, 2021.

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Do you use Radeon Anti-Lag?

  1. Yes/Enabled

    25 vote(s)
    40.3%
  2. No/Disabled

    37 vote(s)
    59.7%
  1. MerolaC

    MerolaC Ancient Guru

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    AFAIK, you have to be GPU bound for it to be useful.
    Otherwise, it doesn't reduce LAG.

    So, all I do is use Chill to limit the game to my monitor's refresh rate (-4 fps) to engage FreeSync. That also avoids the GPU to be at 100% all the time for no reason.
     
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  2. TheChester

    TheChester Guest

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    Yes he is right. Your cpu feeds the gpu as it processes the frame. If you cpu processes it faster than the gpu can handle it can add input latency. Radeon anti lag slows down the cpu to prevent that. It works best at lower frame rates. At 60hz you have 16 ms between each frame. So for those 16ms while the next frame is being processed you moved your mouse but didn't see it. The higher your fps the lower your frame times go. I game at 260-300 fps and my frame times are around 3ms. You see and feel everything. Modern Warfare is pretty sweet because you can turn on your gpu time and cpu time. Ideally you want them to be equal. But if you cpu is running at 6ms and your gpu is driving miss daisy at 12ms it's going to add input latency. In a perfect world your cpu and gpu would work at the same speed, with consistant frametimes and your fps and monitors refresh rate were identical. If your fps is lower than your monitors refresh rate than will give you tearing because your monitor is going to the next frame before the gpu finished rendering it so you only get a partial frame displayed over the old one. This is why V-Sync exists. It looks the frame on the monitor until the next one is completed. But now you have a frozen image until the next one is completed. No bueno for input latency. To fix this Freesync/G-sync was created it allows the monitor to match it's refresh rate with fps of the gpu. It's a great idea for visuals but I found I don't like the feel of it. On my old system I just dealt with the tearing.
     
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  3. Banana4Nanners

    Banana4Nanners Master Guru

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    I play at 240hz/fps+ it's not at all helpful
     

  4. NvidiaFreak650

    NvidiaFreak650 Master Guru

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    Try Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War with Anti-Lag on, you going to see what i mean. online mode feel like you moving at 15fps while running at 60hz/120hz hahaha.
     
  5. TheChester

    TheChester Guest

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    No, I'm gonna jump on I have a sweet program that measures frame times. I'll see if it makes a difference. Probably not as I have a 5800x and a 6900xt lol. But I'll crank up the render resolution to 200 % that makes my gpu go through the roof and drops me down to like a 120 fps lol. Modern Warfare is on a whole nother level but it's takes some steam to do it.
     
  6. Banana4Nanners

    Banana4Nanners Master Guru

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    Doesn't count if you have to force down the GPU to extremes to get a benefit lol
     
  7. RealNC

    RealNC Ancient Guru

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    It's a preference of latency vs throughput. It limits how fast the CPU pushes rendering work to the GPU. So it's not for free. It can result in less FPS.
     
  8. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    Anti-Lag worsens frame time variance in a lot of titles. Sometimes it's not noticeable, while sometimes it is. In CoD Warzone it causes really bad stuttering. On the other hand, it can also reduce stuttering caused by dumb CPU prerender (e.g. in Fortnite D3D12).
    Nvidia's "NULL" usually doesn't cause stuttering, but it can cause the frame time graph to look a bit like a sinus curve, which might not be great either (but is a problem less often and sometimes is better than the mild stutter you'd get otherwise).
     
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  9. elaganza

    elaganza Master Guru

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    useless technology. Use chill mode .it is almost the only good thing came right from AMD.))))
     
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  10. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    It might be useless for people who aren't sensible toward lag. If you don't have very high fps and you hate lag, A-L can be very useful.
    Chill is btw. not really good, it sometimes turns itself off when GPU load gets too low (some old games etc.). That's really not what I would want a good fps limiter to do.
    And too bad that Anti-Lag can't be used with Chill. They really should have put more thought into it.
     
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  11. Undying

    Undying Ancient Guru

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    This. I played Days Gone with anti lag on and i had some nasty stuttering mostly in towns until i realized and turned it off. Stuttering was almost gone (game has its own issues) but overall it was much smoother. I was gpu limited but it still happened.
     
  12. illusiveman

    illusiveman Master Guru

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    Because it's usually buggy and causes stuttering in many games. You are better off using the in-game framelimiter, radeon chill as a fps limiter or a third party fps limiter like RTSS. You should watch Battlenonsense on youtube. He did a couple of videos explaining how this works and why antilag or the nvidia equivalent are worse and give a bad gaming experience with inconsistent frametimes.
    TLDR go on youtube and search for "battlenonsense less input lag without amd anti-lag" and " battlenonsense AMD's chill vs. RTSS " and you should check his channel there are a couple more videos on this subject.
     
  13. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    I've seen the videos, he unfortunately tests only very few games (mostly just Overwatch). Overwatch is one of those examples where Anti-Lag indeed doesn't help much (but it imho doesn't cause perceivable stutter either), but it does in other games (works fine e.g. in Metro Exodus, SotTR, Hitman 2 etc.). Not veryone always plays with fps limits, quite some in-game limiters cause noticable stutter and Chill and RTSS don't necesarrily have lower lag than uncapped fps with Anti-Lag.
    With Nvidia, you can also combine NULL with the driver limiter for <=D3D11, which shows a flat line in RTSS frame time graph while having very low latency at the same time. Battlenonsense didn't even test that once...

    Generally, I found Anti-Lag to work better with D3D12 than with D3D11. It's a bummer that there's no D3D12 equivalent with Nvidia (Reflex is better, but only available in a limited number of multiplayer shooters).
     
  14. ClockClocker

    ClockClocker Master Guru

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    I'd say on a "weak" CPU it causes more lag/stutter than it actually helps. Other than that i don't see much off a downside.


    Why -4 FPS? I use chill as well and i have capped it to the Monitor Refresh rate since the "guide" here https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh-033 said "The Chill Max value will match the peak refresh rate."
     

  15. MerolaC

    MerolaC Ancient Guru

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    Because if I set it to 72hz (as it's my display's refresh rate), I never see FreeSync engage.
    It was also recommended to me a while ago. I gotta find that topic.

    Edit:

    I took it from here. Though, I do not use VSync.
    https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?t=4956#p38315
     
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  16. illusiveman

    illusiveman Master Guru

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    I have a 144Hz monitor and in multiplayer games like warzone, pubg, etc I always get more than 144 fps if I leave it uncapped. I don't like playing with screen tearing and I always limit fps below the refresh rate. If I had a 240Hz or higher monitor than maybe I would enable anti lag and leave the fps uncapped. I don't know anything about using nvidia gpus and NULL. I sold my nvidia card 4 years ago, can't comment on that.
    In single player games I don't care about input lag, if for some reason I can't limit fps in a SP game I preffer to enable vsync. I can't stand screen tearing :)
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2021
  17. NvidiaFreak650

    NvidiaFreak650 Master Guru

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    That because CPU and GPU milliseconds are in sync when you have Anti-Lag on, with Anti-Lag off CPU and GPU can render the milliseconds it want.
     
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  18. aufkrawall2

    aufkrawall2 Ancient Guru

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    The game actually runs very well with Nvidia NULL, it's the AMD D3D11 driver that causes most of the stutter (runs better with DXVK). It's not really a surprise that Anti-Lag makes it worse when it already struggles without it.
    Though the game additionally also has a camera jumping mouse input bug (happens also when leaving CPU prerender at app controlled), also happens on Linux in Proton. It doesn't happen all the time, but e.g. sometimes when changing camera perspective via mouse while moving forward and sideways at the same time (or while riding the bike).
     
  19. NvidiaFreak650

    NvidiaFreak650 Master Guru

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    Test: Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War (DX12)
    CPU: Ryzen 5800x (Stock), GPU: AMD Radeon 6900 XT (Reference Model stock) Max setting @ 4K 60hz.

    AMD Anti-Lag on
    Anti Lag on.jpg

    AMD Anti-Lag off
    Anti Lag off.jpg
     
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