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More info?)
I'll try to make this as simple as possible.
Antialiasing (AA) & Anisotropic Filtering (AF) set to on should always give you
better graphics in a game. The higher you set them the better the game should
look, but it will also slow the game down more the higher you set them.
Antialiasing is filtering to get rid of the stair stepping in straight lines.
When your looking at a the egde of a wall in a game you will notice steps.
That's because the line is digital and because the resolution is not high
enough to make those steps small enough so they can't be noticed. You could
crank up the resolution in the games your playing. That would make the steps
smaller, but you would still notice them somewhat unless you were using a extra
super high resolution on a large monitor. So Antialiasing will smooth out those
steps even at lower resolutions like 640 x 480 or 800 x 600.
Anisotropic Filtering is for textures. The only way I can describe it is. If
your playing a game and you look at the ground you will notice the farther away
from you the ground is the blurrier it is also. They do that with the games to
have them run at reasonable speeds. So you can have Anisotropic Filtering in
side of the game and also on the video card in the hardware. So you could crank
it up in the game and also on the video card. Some games just use it on the
video card or can have their own Anisotropic Filtering. Anisotropic Filtering
helps a lot with flight sims. If your flying look at the ground without
Anisotropic Filtering you should see a glimmering effect with is not realistic.
Anisotropic Filtering will help get rid of that. You can also notice when
Anisotropic Filtering is on by looking at the ground in Half-life or Return to
Castle Wolfenstein. The ground will look in focus farther out when it is on. It
also helps with wall textures in the same way.
Some games might not work OK with Antialiasing or Anisotropic Filtering on.
Battlefield 1942 gets blurry text, but most will work fine and look much better
with them on.
I always try to use a little bit of both settings. Because each one helps in a
different way. If your running at a high resolution you might not need a high
setting for Antialiasing. There are no hard rues to follow. Just try setting
them as high as possible without causing your games to slow down too much.
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