Graphic settings question

[Cujo]

What makes textures look crisp and sharp? Texture detail or texture filtering?
I've noticed that when i set texture detail to high and filtering only on trilinear, models textures don't look as good as they could.
So, what exactly fitering does?

 

[DarkSonic]

Filtering, I believe would make them crisp and sharp...My textures look fine on High. The reason that they may not look crisp is because of no AF. AF makes the textures look clearer when far away...

 

[Cujo]

Of course by "texture filtering" i mean "anisotropic filtering".