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Finally pulled the trigger on a DMA card and currently waiting for the hardware to arrive. In the meantime, I've been doing a deep dive into custom firmware (CFW) building. The consensus seems to be that emulating a donor device is the most reliable way to stay UD, but there's a lot of noise about what to actually mimic to avoid detection.
The standard advice is usually to grab a network card (NIC), but if your motherboard already has an onboard NIC or you're running a discrete one, having "duplicate" device types in the PCIe tree is a massive red flag. Most decent anti-cheats will flag two identical device types if it doesn't make sense for your motherboard layout.
The Donor Device Strategy
We're looking for PCIe devices that are common enough to be "invisible" but distinct enough to not clash with your existing hardware stack.
Anti-Cheat Context
From my research, BattlEye (BE) is currently quite relaxed about the actual quality of the firmware compared to something like Vanguard (VGK). For games like Tarkov or R6, you don't necessarily need a perfect 1:1 replica, but laziness with your TLP or PCIe config space is still a fast track to a manual ban. If you're just pasting a public config from GitHub, you're basically asking for a flag.
If you aren't building your own firmware and checking it against a proper PCIe leecher or analyzer, you're playing Russian roulette with your HWID.
What donor devices are you guys currently using to keep your DMA setups under the radar?
The standard advice is usually to grab a network card (NIC), but if your motherboard already has an onboard NIC or you're running a discrete one, having "duplicate" device types in the PCIe tree is a massive red flag. Most decent anti-cheats will flag two identical device types if it doesn't make sense for your motherboard layout.
The Donor Device Strategy
We're looking for PCIe devices that are common enough to be "invisible" but distinct enough to not clash with your existing hardware stack.
- Sound Cards — Often overlooked, but excellent for emulation as they are common and have predictable config spaces.
- SATA Controllers — A solid choice, though you need to ensure the config space doesn't look like a generic template.
- USB Controllers — Highly common and easy to find donor data for, but again, watch out for duplicates if you have multiple controllers already.
- Wi-Fi Adapters — If you're on a desktop with Ethernet, emulating a Wi-Fi card is a very safe bet.
Anti-Cheat Context
From my research, BattlEye (BE) is currently quite relaxed about the actual quality of the firmware compared to something like Vanguard (VGK). For games like Tarkov or R6, you don't necessarily need a perfect 1:1 replica, but laziness with your TLP or PCIe config space is still a fast track to a manual ban. If you're just pasting a public config from GitHub, you're basically asking for a flag.
1. Config Space: Don't just copy the VID/PID. You need to replicate the full config space (Device ID, Revision ID, Subsystem ID) of the donor.
2. BAR Settings: Ensure your Base Address Registers match what the donor device would actually use in a real PCIe slot.
3. Master Abort/Target Abort: Proper firmware should handle these correctly to avoid timing-based detection vectors.
2. BAR Settings: Ensure your Base Address Registers match what the donor device would actually use in a real PCIe slot.
3. Master Abort/Target Abort: Proper firmware should handle these correctly to avoid timing-based detection vectors.
If you aren't building your own firmware and checking it against a proper PCIe leecher or analyzer, you're playing Russian roulette with your HWID.
What donor devices are you guys currently using to keep your DMA setups under the radar?
