Altering Graphics
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Altering Graphics
This is solely dependant upon which make of graphics card you have.
Just as an example, here is the difference between low and high quality.
nVidia
Open up the nVidia Control Panel. You can do this either by right clicking on the system tray icon and select NVIDIA Control Panel ...
Or, you can open the control panel from your computer's control panel ...
Once you have the nVidia Control Panel open, select the "Adjust Image Settings with Preview" found under the 3D Settings.
You definetly do not want to use "Let the 3D application decide".
If you select "Use my preference emphasizing" you can change it from performance to quality via the slider bar.
Or if you know what you're doing (or willing to listen to the explanations given later), you can select "Use the advanced 3D image settings" and click "take me there" then you're taken to this page:
As you can see, I have everything set to off ... I dislike screenlag very much ... but even with everything set to off for max performance, I get FPS drops in stages where there are a huge mass of cells and my MK poison spams ... like the 2nd room in stage 59 but I've never had screenlag ingame which is all that matters, stages are piss easy without my MK either way :D
For max quality, you might have these settings:
If you apply those and go back to the "Adjust Image Settings with Preview" page.
You can see there is a huge difference in the preview than in the previous preview screenshot .
ATi
Need to add
What each setting does
Personally, I think the ATi Control Panel is better in that it gives you an example for each thing that you can set. However, sometimes you can't be sure what it does, it just lookers smoother to the noob eye. Essentially thats true. But I will explain with a bit more depth so you can decide for yourself.
Antitropic filtering
This is a method of enhancing the texture quality on surfaces where the angle from which you're viewing it is oblique. Anisotropic filtering is relatively intensive (primarily memory bandwidth and to some degree computationally). So unless you really need to see distant objects in high detail, this can be turned off.
Antialiasing
This is a method of enhacing the edges of objects in game so that they appear smooth and unpixelated.
Take a look at these diamonds for example: 
Compare the diamond on the left with the antialiased one on the right.
I highly recommend the use of antialiasing if you're taking screenshots for people to make signatures.
Mipmaps
These are are pre-calculated, optimized collections of images that accompany a main texture, intended to increase rendering speed and reduce aliasing artifacts.
This is recommended to be turned off or set to none as it reduces the effects of antialiasing.
Texture Filtering
This is the method used to determine the texture color for a texture mapped pixel, using the colors of nearby texels (pixels of the texture). In short, it blends the texture pixels together by breaking them up into tinier pixels. Another term for texture filtering is called texture smoothing.
This is like antialiasing except instead of working on the edges of objects, it works on the textures of objects. Again, if you're taking screenshots for people to make signatures, I suggest you set these to on or max quality.
Vertical Sync
This locks the frame frame rendering rate to the monitor refresh rate. This improves the image quality by eliminating horizontal tearing effects in the 3D image.
