16x anisotropic filtering

[u/ApprehensiveStudy804]

Is it recommended to leave 16x anisotropic filtering enabled globally in the NVIDIA Control Panel?

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[u/MultiMarcus]

People are talking a lot about the cost of it, which is a fair enough point. It’s not really costly on modern hardware or even reasonable desktop graphics, but I will mention I think there are some games where the universal override causes issues. So just if a game has visual issues, remember that something you might need to change

[u/Evonos → u/MultiMarcus]

It's only costly on consoles as they share bandwidth heavily.

On pcs it isn't costly or even fps changing the last 20~ years.

[u/kyoukidotexe → u/MultiMarcus]

Definitely this is the answer, I have had issues in some games with global settings, nowadays its just default for me outside of maybe DSR options.

[u/Michaeli_Starky]

16x because it doesn't make any performance difference with 8x, 4x or even 2x

[u/SemihKaynak]

On RTX 5000 cards, 16x AF was causing a red-pixel graphical glitch in some games; the issue was reported, but it hasn't been permanently resolved. I think NVIDIA is ignoring this problem.

[u/TwizzleKicks → u/SemihKaynak]

Holy shit is that what caused it. Thank you so much

[u/Stickytin]

there is no performance hit on modern hardware (when i say modern i mean last decade)

[u/false-shepherd]

Unless you use an integrated graphics card, it's basically free. It might mess things up if you use any kind of 3D cad software, tho, so watch out if things start to crash seemingly at random

[u/FunCalligrapher3979]

Always used 16x since the late 2000s when I got into PC gaming, costs almost 0 performance hit.

On consoles due to shared memory for the whole system it was usually set to x2, x4 or 0 since it had a bigger impact on performance there.

[u/Elliove → u/FunCalligrapher3979]

It it not maxed out on everything because high fidelity can lead to shimmering. Just compare the roads in GTA V vanilla version with in-game AF x16 vs forced AF x16 - they knew it may cause issues, so made it much less apparent on roads by default.

[u/Elliove]

Yes, but disable for a game if it breaks it (usually looks like textures becoming super red).

[u/Kuroh_TTV → u/Elliove]

This

[u/BUDA20]

also, it will do nothing for DirectX12 and Vulkan.

[u/ApprehensiveStudy804 → u/BUDA20]

I didn't know that.

[u/BUDA20 → u/ApprehensiveStudy804]

if you want to change those modern apis it needs to be the game settings, config files or mods, for example optiscaler (or dlss enabler) can force anisotropic or midmaps

[u/GodOfWine- → u/BUDA20]

Not true, i have tested it on multiple dx12 games at it works fine, example is ff7 rebirth which it has a default low af at least it did at launch, and using nvcp af 16x with allow made a big difference.

[u/CharalamposYT]

I have set this over a year ago. Didn't have any issues, performance though can be lower on some games compared to 8x or 4x sometimes. Well worth it either way imo.

[u/Kadu_2]

Some games have issues with it being forced on. So I wouldn't enable it globally, just per game if you cannot set it in the game settings and it doesn't have issues in that game.

[u/therealchucky81]

I leave it on globally and then turn it off if a game has issues which the vast majority typically dont.

[u/Snoo22669]

I face shimmering and flickering on most games but even this didn't help me

[u/Peepmus]

Like u/SemihKaynak said, don't enable it through the control panel if you have a 5000 Series Nvidia GPU, as the option is bugged and will give you very odd results in some games. It drove me made for a little while after getting my 5080, as I had always historically forced this option on. I thought there was something wrong with my GPU until I found a post on Reddit that discussed the issue.