First off, let me request please that someone update the first post in this thread to indicate CLEARLY that nHancer is NOT for cards newer than the 400 series. .. I almost went ahead and installed it, but fortunately read the installer readme .. then came back here to discover Inspector .. I've got a GTX560 Ti you see, with the 301.42 drivers. That coulda gone badly.
Secondly, I jumped to the end here after reading that first post. Glad I did. Soon to try Inspector here. I had no idea nVidia cards had these AA .. issues .. frankly I bought the card for CUDA and GPGPU rendering in 3D software. Gaming with it is just a bonus. =D
Thirdly, I gotta point out an error just a couple posts above: Orpheus said that "Anisotropic Filtering is a lighting effect." and I'm afraid that just is not true. I believe Orpheus must be confusing anisotropic SHADING with anisotropic filtering. Filtering is used in games to remove texturing errors, like moire lines in the distance on a regular grid. :: In general it comes with virtually no FPS hit, so you should generally have it set at 16x, unless that causes problems with any specific games. ::
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_filtering
Anisotropic shading, on the other hand, is "kinda" a lighting effect, in that it relates to how light reflects off a surface. It's the effect you get on, say, a flat disk of brushed metal: instead of a point-like specular highlight, you get an line of specular highlighting along the surface. It is generally not anything gamers need to concern themselves with, at it is primarily a setting in 3D rendering applications. Games use it, sure, but it's not a "setting" the player has any control over. ::
http://www.3drender.com/glossary/anisotropic.htm
that is all ... except .. is there a thread specific to SH3 for this? or is posting here fine for SH3 on nVidia? ... Not realizing the intricacies of nVidia AA, I just set my brand new card right to 32x AA and was rather shocked to see nasty jaggies on ships in the distance and crawling on bright highlights (windows, waves, etc) D'OH!!! ... I would MUCH rather have AA over the sun glare. I can live without sun glare, but I gotta be able to make out as much detail as possible on ships 20km away
.. trying to determine angle on bow when you can barely even make out the masts is nigh impossible.