used to run the game with adaptive MSAA (CSAA) or SSAA with shadow resolution at 8192 and iBlurDeferredShadowMask=0 and it used to filter the shadows really well

it seems thats been patched out at some point, as in SSAA no longer effects shadows, has anyone else noticed this?

Holy Supercomputer Batman!!!! I run 4096 shadows(primary and secondary) and mask at 2 and using 4x SSAA. I haven't seen any visual difference in mine at all. Are you using the 1.5 beta?

yeah just testing the 1.5 beta see if they've fixed the lag issues :/, i'll revert backto 1.4.0.27 for script dragon and a smooth duel wield hotkey function from extended hotkeys.

seemed the issue may have been in 1.4.0.27 aswell

Ive tried rolling back to the 12.2 pre cert catalysts but the shadows are still [censored], which makes me think it happened in a patch

i'm thinking that the shadows may have been unflagged for filtering algorithms or something, all i know is my shadows used to look gorgeous now they are just back to being (8k deferred=0) stack of flickering blocks

Ugh seems everytime I get my shadows ironed out they do something to ruin it as well. I have pretty much given up on tweaks from now on until they are done with all these patches. I mean the fact that they are still patching is good but more in the long term than day to day.

There seems to be more that is wrong ... or changed. As mentioned here http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1358834-nvidia-ambient-occlusion-no-longer-works/ the Nvidia Ambient Occlusion seems not to be working or they changed the way it works. It too effects shadows ofcourse.

with shadow resolution at 8192 = your lag....try 4096

na its smooth running at 8192 shadow res with my 7970s in crossfire at 2560*1440 ultra everything, though i never tried 8192 shadows on my previous 6950 crossfire setup so i dont know if just down to my 7970's

Meh even my rig can handle the 8192 even on secondary as well without any fps dive or extra hitching. Setting shadow mask to 0 affects me much more and thus I leave it at 2 and run the 4096 because I would actually like to have my card still working next year. Also I don't notice a huge difference from my settings and the max settings shadows look bad in Skyrim somewhere no matter what you do it seems. I have been experimenting with 4096 4096 2 and it seems to be the perfect spot for me.