I've been wondering what to set my graphics to.
When I hit Default my game sets me to Ultra High Quality. But for antialiasing and anisotropic filtering it sets me 8 and 16 respectively. Is that good? Skyrim says 0 is the best performance for both. Does that mean looks better or runs faster.

The higher the number, the more it taxes your system, in short. AF at x16 will barely hurt performance, AA at x8 will tremendously hurt performance. My advice is try it. If its too slow, drop the AA some. Shadows are another killer, dropping the shadow setting will most likely help you the most. They look like [censored] on all settings anyways=p

So x16 will look better than x8?

Or is it reveresed? (Sorry didn't really understand that second sentence.

He was actually talking about AF x16 and AA x8. So two different things, AF and AA.

AF does not hurt performance as much as AA does. AF also goes up to x16 but AA only to x8. Lowering AA from x8 to x4 will increase performance much more than lowering AF from x16 to x8.

The bigger the number, the better image quality and slower performance.

Yes, x16 AA and AF will look better. x16 AA removes even more jaggies than x8 AA. I agree with http://www.gamesas.com/user/630142-quanta78/, you can try both settings and then decide which better suits your tastes. Generally speaking, a higher AA improves image quality at the expense of FPS performance, and vice versa. If you raise these values to their max, but find that game gets choppy, then lower them and try again.


About shadows? In general the shadow quality in Skyrim is a mixed bag at best, and there's no real way to improve them from the Options menu.

Okay thanks.

Now I have an opinion question.

My specs are 560TI Msi 1GB and i5-2320. I can run with everything maxed out but it looks just a little choppy. I want to keep Ultra Detail but I don't know enough about the AA and AF to make a decision. Any suggestion on what looks nice and would run really well? Thanks

I suggest a simple approach of starting at Ultra (like you have) and bit by bit turning down options. For example, leave all your settings on Ultra, and turn down AA to 8x and try the game again. If it's still choppy, try 4x, etc, etc.

Also, (DUH) I should have added this:

http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide?sf2686171=1

This is an excellent introduction into "tweaking" your game, and includes example pictures and definitions. Since you're new to AA and such, I really don't recommend touching your INI files.

My AA was already on x8. Thats the highest number displayed for AA. Do you mean AF?

Whoops. No, sorry. I mixed up AA and AF.

For starters, leave your AF at 16x. What you want to do is turn down your AA setting from 8x to 4x, then try the game. If it's still too choppy at 4x, try 2x, etc, etc.