Gaming graphics question

I have a Nvidia 8600 GTS with 256MB memory on my AMD Athlon 64 4200+ machine which has 2 Gigs of RAM. I don't know which is the best way to get performance out of the card for gaming. I mostly play Flight Simulator 2004 and Battlefield 2142. Should I:

1. Set the Ansiotropic Filtering and Anti-Aliasing through the NVIDIA control panel and turn them off in games.
2. Or set them to "Application Controlled" and set them in the games?

Thanks for any help!

 

Setting it through the Nvidia control panel will set it for all games...setting it per application is only well...for that application. Not all games let you do that. I'm not aware there is any difference aside from that.