Hi,

AA no longer work at all in my Skyrim game, and I would really, really like to get some ideas about what to do, as I consider AA to be very important in my game. I just hate how the jagged edges move around when what you look at moves slightly.

I've just started playing Skyrim for real last week (after having got it on preorder), and took my time to set it up to look good, including 8xAA. I did this by turning AA (and AF) off in Skyrim options, and on in my Nvidia control panel, and it worked right, where 8xAA was the sweet spot for my rig. After some days I noticed that all edges looked jagged, and found that AA simply got no longer worked (Skyrim ignoring the Nvidia AA setting).

I tried turning AA on in Skyrim options, but the result then was that the menu and loading screen displayed correctly (with AA enabled), but the game then simply hang at the loading screen. Some of the times it would start playing the sounds of the loaded savegame (or new game if I chose new), but the screen just hangs in the loading screen. Even 2xAA makes the game hang on the loading screen.

So I'm pretty desperate for ideas of what to do. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Skyrim completely, and updating my Nvidia drivers from 280.something, to 295 and now the latest 296.10 beta drive. I have Geforce GTX 570 GPU, i5-2500K CPU, 8GB RAM and 64-bit Windows 7 Proffessional, so my HW is more than up to the task.

So do anyone have any ideas of what I can try?

AA in Skyrim doesn't work unless you have it set in the launcher. This is what you do;

Set 2xAA and 16xAF in Launcher,

Go to your Nvidia Control Panel under D3D settings > Program Settings and go to it's profile on Skyrim and set AA to 8x and select 'Override any application setting'. This will use 8xAA rather than the launcher 2xAA. You have to have a AA value, in the launcher otherwise it won't work.

If this doesn't work then can you tell me if you are using Nvidia Inspector?

I'm pretty sure I had it working by setting it off in the launcher and using 'Override any application setting' in the Nvidia Control Panel - before it stopped working.

...but as said above, if I start the game with any AA enabled in the Launcher Options, the game freezes in the load menu when the game is supposed to start. And if I start the game with AA turned off in the options, the 'Override any application setting' in the Nvidia control panel will not take effect.


This causes the game to freeze as explained above.


Nope, only the standard Control Panel.


Btw, enabling FXAA in the Launcher Options worked, so that at least removed the worst jagged edges. Still not nearly as good as I want it though.

Are you using ENB?

I have an 580 which is only slighter faster than your and I use 3x3 supersampling without a problem so I don't know what your problems is.

So with just 8x AA in your launcher and with 'Anti-Aliasing Mode - Application controlled' set in your nvidia control panel the game hangs on loading screen. If that is the case that is strange as I cannot see how the AA with the game by itself can cause that.

Have you altered any ini settings... delete them from mygames/skyrim and then it will remake new ones when you launch the game again.

I found the problem Kazekage, thanks for your help. It wasn't really any of the things you suggested (except that it seems you're correct when it comes to the fact that the Nvidia Control panel AA isn't used when the launcer AA is off) - but your questions lead me to try new things, and one of them proved to be the solution.

I had already deleted ini files (I had altered quite a few things) and even reinstalled the entire game (with a broken DVD player, so I had to download from Steam instead), but it was none of that. The problem was some kind of bug with Skyrim's profile in the Nvidia Control Panel (short: NCP). I had already noticed that the NCP would freeze if I tried to remove the Skyrim profile (which I had added manually by pointing to Skyrimlauncher.exe), so I assume those two freezes (of the NPC and Skyrim) was related - but froze the moment they really tried to access the profile. Anyway, while removing the profile directly didn't work, it disappeared when I used reset the main "Restore Defaults" option, the Skyrimlauncer.exe profile disappeared, which was exactly what I needed

So now I can use the built-in "Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim" profile in the NCP, and it works, letting me set whatever AA options I want. By setting the launcer AA setting down to 2, I even got a decent framerate of 40-someting with every single option set to max in the NCP (but that was in a dungeon without anyone else alive, so I expect I have to turn it back down a bit again).

So thanks for taking the time to help.

You should get higher fps with your system. I have the same except I have 580. I overclocked my 2500k to 4.3ghz without touching voltages and I got another 11fps in Skyrim.

What settings in the launcher do you use except obviously 8xAA? Ambient Occlusion? Transparency AA?

How much vram does your 570 have and do you use the HD textures DLC?

The 40-something framerate was with HD textures, 32xCSAA, 8xTransparency AA, Quality Ambient Occlusion and 16xAF and 1920x1200 resolution - e,g. max of everything.

When turning it down to 16xCSAA, 2xTRAA and Performance Ambient Occlusion (but High Quality 16xAF) I max out to 60 FPS (Vsync on) in the same location. Out in the open, it ranges around 48-55 when moving, and then going up to 60 when I stop. I guess that's about what to be expected? In addition to the HD textures DLC, I have Realistic Lightning, Realistic Water and Terrain (High) and Static Mesh Improvement Mod. Btw, I also have my 2500K overclocked to just above 4.3Ghz (with no voltage changes).

You should not use CSAA it is not compatible with Skyrim. It's your choice but I would go with full-scene supersampling activated by Nvidia Inspector it looks a lot better than MSAA or CSAA and you won't have to use 8xTRAA as it does everything not just transparent textures. It will also use less resources funnily enough.

I personally cannot play with less than 60fps, it's so stuttering its horrendous.

It isn't? How do I (or you) know such things?

Do you mean the "Antialising - Transparency Supersampling" setting? Isn't that the same as choosing Supersamling for "Antialising Transparency" in the control panel? I did install the Nvidia Inspector, and choosing 2x in the Control Panel made it 2x in the Inspector as well, so they seem to be the same. Or are you talking about something else?

Could you list the exact AA settings you recommend, or do you have any link that explains it all?


I am used to Oblivion, where I was lucky to get 30fps

This is one of the reasons why I never let these control panels run the games, or even start up with Windows. I have found that the in game settings are better for setting graphics options. This applies to both Nvidia and AMD/ATI.