The reason i started this thread was because ive been doing some testing.
i use NVhardpage for the testing. it allows a lod of 48. but does it make a diffrence on high end hardware, no. nothing at all any more. it may bive you 1k in 01, but nowhere else. infact, AQM3 gains from oposite LOD. making it sharper improves the score over poor quality.
i still use it, as it allows slightly higher clocks, due to being less demanding on the cpu, but otherwise, your not gaining anything. its just like reducing the quality settings in the drivers another notch.
it never use to be possible to turn AA and AF off on ATI cards, yet i never had it on. ATItool used to have a nice setting that turned it completally off. now was that a cheat? another driver to be tweeked.
if you check the nvidia drivers, LOD is allready in there, same for ATI, they just set it slightly diffrently, better performance or better IQ. either way, its in there and the manufactureres use it to sell there cards.
ok, i went off at a bit of a tangent.