Advice - AA & Anisotropic filtering

Hi,

Was wondering if anyone had any opinion's/thoughts/advice about both of these...

I currently run 4x AA in GW - set via the in-game option - and don't have any problems with performance or such. I probably could set it to 0x in GW and force it to be 6x or 8x and likely not experience any problem's.. but i'm happy with 4x right now (I will need to test fps and such of the forced settings...)

My query is more about Anisotropic filtering - currently thats set to 0. I admit my knowledge of what exactly this does is non-existent! hehe.. Is it worth forcing anisotropic filtering?

Just what does this filtering do? Does it work with, or against what AA does? Does anyone have any links to site's with information about anisotropic filtering that can help me out?

I guess i could always stick it on and see how it looks .. but I do like getting advice before I try stuff out. I like having some idea of what something does! LOL

Anisotropic Filtering low down.

For some reason, GW totally ignores my AA and AF settings from my driver panel!

Even if I max them out, which is how I normally have them set, GW doesn't apply them. However, if I set them via the game (4x AA) it works a treat.

AF doesn't seem to work for me. I tried and, well, no luck.

I don't remember seeing an option for anisotropic filtering in the game options, but it does have AA there.

Personally I set my aniso filtering at the driver level, using ATI tray tools. I have a custom profile for Guild Wars that loads up with AA set on "application preference" and Aniso to 16x and Quality filtering (may be overkill there but I still get fantastic performance).

And believe me, I can see the difference when it's not on. The place to see the difference the most is on the ground, stretching out in front of you. Without Aniso filtering you will see "blurr bars" ahead of you, and especially on terrain that is more detailed like bricks. It's not as easy to notice at all if you are walking in the desert for example. The terrain is not detailed enough. Places like LA (bricky paved areas), and the parched/cracked ground in Ascalon are places you can see the difference more.

Setting AF in the ATI Catalyst Control Panel works just fine for me, I have it at max setting 16x.