The Render Settings (wich I think you mean.. since it's the closest thing to render globals, with adjustable settings) does not have a Hardware Texturing tab, but when I put the quality higher here, it does not show.. before rendering a picture.

But in the tutorial the guy puts the texture quality higher, and the result is visible immedietly, so you can see how the textures are actually going to look like.. Because now, they dont look right. blurry and stuff.

So am I looking at the wrong thing now??? since editing the quality in Render Settings wont change anything visual.