Considering that

1. Radeon anti-lag will also work on GCN based GPUs;
2. It only works on DX 9 and 11, but not on DX 12 and Vulkan.


I'd say that they tapped into Vulkan at some stage in the graphics pipeline to bring the benefits of these closer to the metal API's to DX 9 and DX 11. I wouldn't be surprised if they had learned something from the Vulkan-based translation layers for Linux DXVK (for DX 10 and 11 games) and VK9 (for DX 9 games).

And yeah, if it's that it's a neat trick and Nvidia will probably have to follow suit and copy the technique, but for now it seems that they resorted to bullcrap to pretend that they've had it for a long time and hope that people don't notice the substance until they are actually ready with a comparable solution.

There is one thing though I have to ask, the solution may not always bring the desired effects, why would you otherwise not have it on always? Is it just an option so that you can get to see the before and after, but ultimately meant to be always on? Or does it bring some problems in some games and you need to turn it off?