Hardware AA and Anisotropic filtering or not?

[artao]

Hey again ...
This time I'm wondering about whether it would be more efficient (i.e. faster, smoother, etc) to run X2 using the Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering of my video card as opposed to the graphics option "Anti-Aliasing" on the start up dialog.
I'm guessing using my vid card would be the better option, as it's an ATI x700 with 256 megs RAM, which is pretty well beyond available hardware at the time the game was made.
Confirmation? Denials? Explanations?
Thanks!!
...
I'm posting this here 'cause it seems to be tech support, and I'm primarily playing X2 right now. I'm assuming the hardware AA and Ani would be a better (the only) choice for BTF and X-T ..... What about X3: R however? X3: TC barley even runs for me right now, so I'm not concerned about that one ... yet .....
...
again, thanks!!

[artao]

Perhaps I should add .... the obvious question you may have for me is, "Well, why don't you just TRY it instead of asking about it here?"
A fair question.
Short answer: I have, with no noticeable difference.
However, I am not far enough into the game where there's large fleets of ships in battle. Heck, I only own two ships myself, plus numerous NavSats. I've been playing awhile now, but kept going back to earlier saves to try different things. Therefore, my campaign is not yet very advanced.
I have had two or three occurrences of odd, glitchy behaviour. In both cases, I jumped into a sector and suddenly the game became a slideshow. Also, certain screen elements stopped drawing correctly. Exiting and restarting, of course, fixes it. The last time this happened, I noticed I had on BOTH the hardware AA and Ani as well as X2's AA. Of course THAT'S a bad idea LOLz.
My general inclination, however, is to turn of X2's AA and turn on the 6x or 8x AA in my graphics card, plus 8x Anisotropic filtering. I suppose if I do that, and start noticing glitches, that means it's a bad idea. heh.
Anyhow, any insight would be great!
thanks again!

[CBJ]

It's a good question but one that's almost impossible to answer other than via the " just try it" method. It's anyone's guess how a particular graphical feature of a game will perform with graphics hardware that comes out well after the game was released. While it would be possible to spend a few days analysing code and hardware specifications, it would be far quicker and more efficient to "just try it", and it makes more sense for you to do that in conjunction with the rest of your hardware than for someone else to do it in a system where the results may be skewed due to some other hardware difference. It's also quite possible that the difference between the in-game setting and the driver setting is negligible or even non-existent.

Regarding X3TC, yes, your card will struggle with that. If the rest of your system is of a similar age and performance profile then I'd suggest you wait until you can upgrade before you play X3TC or your experience of it may not be that great. X3R may be OK if you turn down some settings, provided the rest of your system can cope.

[artao]

Thanks for the response. Informative, and kinda what I was thinking.
Perhaps one other question regarding this subject then.
Is X2's AA software AA or does it request AA from the hardware?

[CBJ]

Quite honestly I can't remember, and I don't have the code to hand to go and look. If the performance differs at all from the driver-level AA then that would imply it was software-based; if not then the opposite would be more likely.