Agreed. It's been proven numerous times that on a modern GPU, especially a good, powerful one like the GTX 560 Ti, the performance decrease is literally non existent from 0x to 16x. But the visual benefit is huge.

Here's your proof.

http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide

http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/shared/images/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide/Skyrim-PerformanceChart-AnisotropicFiltering.png

Well, you could always check yourself and see the performance difference.

Those guys are right though, the FPS difference between 0xAF and "Performance" preset is going to be <10% on modern GPUs compared to 16xAF and "High Quality"; its been this way since G80 from every review I've seen that covers it every few years. Keep in mind, we are talking about Anisotropic Filtering (texture filtering) here. The reason the performance hit is so cheap is because the hardware IHVs design their hardware to handle these fixed function procedures with minimal performance loss because they recognize the importance it can have on image quality. You can see the changes they make from one generation architecture to the next, and for a few years now, the TMU (texture mapping unit) to ROP (raster operand/render backends) to SP (stream processor/shader) ratio has generally increased in favor of SP and ROP while TMU ratio has decreased. Why? Because its enough, and adding more hardware there doesn't yield much benefits.

But as a rule of thumb, I don't compromise on AF ever, set it to 16xAF and High Quality globally in the driver control panel and forget about it as the IQ difference is immense and the performance hit negligible. AA and anything else, you do have to tweak because the results and performance hit may not be worth it.

8xAF and 16AF look pretty much identical at 1080p, just like I said. 16x has a slightly darker shadow under the tree. I spent a few minutes comparing the two photos. Looks like a smoke puff from the blacksmith covering the road

I'll admit, 1-3 FPS doesn't sound like much, but when the graphics aren't improved by it, why bother? In low FPS areas, the framerate is important. With 1.4 this maybe be less of an issue, admittedly.

As for the memory consumption, I've never actually measured it, so I can't really argue specifics. All I know is that it uses more memory. And saying that I equated memory consumption of AF to AA is putting words in my mouth.

You can't see the difference in this picture??? Look at the cobblestones on the road. AF is a HUGE benefit in any modern game.

http://international.download.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide/Skyrim-Tweak-Guide-AF-Comparison.html

Great links btw Half64, forgot about those. The Nvidia slider linkies are awesome.

Not really. If you follow the road all the way to the horizon, it looks a little different, yes. If you look closely, the white stuff going across the screen (on top of the cobblestone) is smoke from the blacksmith

I tell you what though, I may try 16xAF after this discussion. I did expect it to be a bigger FPS difference, maybe 5 or 10, admittedly.

The point is that if you want the best image fidelity for a tiny performance hit then AF should be always set to 16x. If you want blurry Xbox quality then be my guest and use 4x.

Lol, I'm starting to like you.

I'm not saying use 4x. I'm just saying, you can get away with 8x at a high resolution, like 1080p. Anyway, like I said, I admit, a couple FPS difference, I guess. You win.

Keep in mind a screen shot isn't really going to show you AF's benefits, its how the textures 'change' as you wander around, moving the angle of the view point and unfortunately that's not something you can really just throw a screen shot up to showcase. Its the difference between wandering down a road in a game and it looking like it ought to vs showing up as just a texture bolted to a polygon you are passing along near the surface of.

Just a note. That image is not ideal because the path doesn't go far and 4x give good enough sharpness there but if you use an image with a long distance path, 16xAF renders the textures nice on sharp for a far distance.

AFx8 to AFx16 won't be a couple of fps. Do several and average it out (cause a bit more smoke can skew one way or another)...I'll be shocked if average fps hit is more than 1.

it's not about winning, it's about showing people what effect has lest or most performance on GPUs today.

Like a lot of effects over time the GPU manufacturers make dedicated units for them so performance becomes less of an issue over generations of newer GPUs. Shaders are becoming not so much an issue now days. I don't think people realise how much power even older GPUs have, since a lot of games just don't utilise them fully and why Crysis is still king when it comes to being a graphics power house, and for good reason.

I was just trying to help too. I see a lot of people cranking up settings perhaps unnecessarily further than they should, and their game doesn't run well.
And, I'm glad to have learned something here today. So I "win" too. I am a vigilant crusader against misinformation, so I gladly stand corrected on the performance hit of AF.

Just found this, which was also a nice confirmation

"If you want even better texture quality through Anisotropic Filtering, you can force Anisotropic Filtering through the graphics card's control panel instead, which provides a noticeable improvement over the AF in Skyrim's in-game settings."

It made no difference for me. The last (and current) patch addressed the large memory address issue which solved the CTDs and loading issues. But this beta patch did nothing to improve the bottleneck areas. I played for about 30 minutes with it. Didn't test any of the broken quest issues. Now, I'll admit I still played with the Skyrim HD texture pack using the highest res images. In the areas of problems, I still get about 30FPS with or without the patch. Removing Skyboost made it slow down a bit to around 26FPS in the areas of problem (Dragonsreach staircase mostly) with or without the patch. For the most part, with my settings all maxed, I still get 60FPS most everywhere else.

OK,.. so there has been a lot of discussion since I checked this thread last. I have two questions.

First, should I change all my settings from ultra to high? Sounds like people aren't seeing much of a difference between the two. I can play with this later, but I would love to hear what you guys think.

Second, should I reinstall Skyboost? I have 1.4 and it definitely seems to be running better, but can I get even more performance from using skyboost?

9/10 dentists think the 10th one is doing it wrong.

Shadows on ultra is quite the performance hog. If you can take it, sure, otherwise reduce it down to high.

And no, don't use SkyBoost with 1.4.

Just use shadows on high, the rest is fine on ultra. I don't recommend using 8xAA either, 4xAA+2xSSAA is a good mix.

Agreed about the AA. Especially on higher resolutions, you won't see a difference between 4x and 8x. Plus anything over 2xSSAA can seriously destroy your FPS in foggy areas.

^ ^ ^ this.