Hey guys, I have a powerful rig that can play Skyrim at max settings with a high resolution texture pack with a steady, and awesome FPS.

I am having trouble, though, with the game's AA settings. When I use any AA setting the game lags. Not so much with 2x but its noticeable during battle.

I have tried FXAA and it is a mess.

I have tried using the CCC and the game does not even look like any AA is being applied unless I use morphalogical filtering. I am using Super sample AA at 8x EQ.

I really need some help guys, I don't know how this works!!!



Just to clarify

The CCC AA does not work on any setting. The in game AA works and looks great but lags like hell. My specs are in my sig, I have 8GB of ram.

You are using 8x Super Sampling EQ, It will destroy your performance regardless of whether you use a high end GPU or not, Set the CCC back to default & use the standard Multi Sampling AA, Do not use adaptive AA.

I don't think that there is a graphics card in existence that can use 8x SSAA & still give playable settings.

Also, Forced on AA has not worked in CCC since the official 11.12 drivers, Not tested RadeonPro or the latest 12.4's yet though.

Any form of transparent multisampling is not a good idea with this game. Beth purposefully disabled the use of transparent multisampling due to the lighting shader variant they used compared to previous game. It conflicts with the lighting shader as it will apply AA to reflected light which is controlled by the settings below in the SkyrimPrefs.ini:

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=

That includes the light that bounces off water, walls, armor, weapons... so on.


My advice is to use the AA through the Skyrim launcher (8x works fine for me) and don't use any transparent multisampling.

Best place to test the AA settings is the Thieves guild headquarters.

Both posts above are correct. Use 8x Multi Sampling, or even 4x, through the launcher. I can't tell a difference between 8x and 4x except in my performance.

I also use 2x Transparency Supersampling through my nVidia control panel. 4x can introduce some FPS loss in transparency intense areas (such as foggy marshes). 2x is a nice balance between performance and quality.

THe most important thing I said is that whenever I use AA through the launcher it lags my game a lot.

I tried overriding the AA settings through CCC. When I do that, even on SSAA 8x EQ I do NOT notice even a little bit of AA in game. CCC doesn't work. The launcher doesn't work. How can I get one of them to work. Thank you.



What does that mean? Forced AA does not work in CCC? Itsn't that something that should work? Thats like releasing a game that can't change the graphics settings even though there is the option.
why would I want to test AA in the Thieves guild headquarters? That doesn't make any sense.



One more thing. If I set the CCC to 'Use Application Settings' for AA, then I go to the bottom and set it to SSAA, will the application settings be using SSAA?

Forcing AA setting through CCC does *not* currently work in Skyrim (or many other games). You can pick a setting, but it won't take effect in game.
The reason you experience lag when selecting it via the Skyrim launcher is that's the only way it's actually working in the game. Your overzealous settings are overtaxing your vram and lagging your game.
As others here have already suggested, try selecting a more moderate AA setting (or select none and use FXAA).

Its a good place to test how transparent aa affects fps. For me AA is the opposite way round for me it works great in the launcher and bad in the gpu control panel. Might be an ATI thing as Im on Nvidia.

Okay, I figured it out. It turnes out that even when I have CCC selected to use application settings for AA, the slider at the bottom that changes the style of AA (MSAA, Adaptive MSAA, SSAA) still controls type of AA that is used. So for this whole time I have had it set to SSAA when I have tried to use AA in the launcher. This made my game lag. I tried changing the CCC setting to regular MSAA and now it works fine.

I must say, though, SSAA looks SOOOOO much better than MSAA, even on 2x. MSAA is like a jaggy FXAA, but runs smooth on 8x.

I've decided to go with just FXAA, as it seems to be the best, and least demanding, option.

Stay away from adaptive for Skyrim imo for performance use MSAA I use 8x SSAA on my 6970 without going below 30 fps but I like a locked fps for the game anything 30 or above is fine as long as it is steady. However my heavily modded version I use MSAA to free up resources for other things....and MSAA in Skyrim is more than adequate the difference is very negligible. I just wanted to see what my card could handle.

SSAA is very nice to look at but when things drop below 40 fps it makes me itch, I used Adaptive AA for a while but as the poster above remarked it gives you flashing textures, It's a pity it does this as adaptive is a great visual compromise between the two.
I'm glad you got it working though, Put it down to experience & enjoy the game now.

I use 2xSSAA + MLAA with my HD5850, Intel Q9300, 1TB HDD samsung (not SSD), Windows 8 CP x64, Catalyst 12.4 WHQL (greatly improves my performance and no CCC, I use RadeonPro instead). With RadeonPro I can activate anisotropic/trilinear optimization, high priority and disable aero too. I have over 70 mods and high res DLC texture pack (optimized version by Vano).

My performance and visual is nice for my old rig, only a few stutter in a few cell transitions loading many spawns.