Abstract. We study the efficiency of the approximate solution of ill-posed problems, based on discretized noisy observations, which we assume to be given beforehand. A basic purpose of the paper is the consideration of stochastic noise, but deterministic noise is also briefly discussed. We restrict ourselves to problems which can be formulated in Hilbert scales. Within this framework we shall quantify the degree of ill-posedness, provide general conditions on projection schemes to achieve the best possible order of accuracy. We pay particular attention on the problem of self-regularization vs. Tikhonov regularization.Moreover, we study the information complexity. Asymptotically, any method which achieves the best possible order of accuracy must use at least such amount of noisy observations. Key words. ill-posed problems, inverse estimation, operator equations, Gaussian white noise, information complexity AMS subject classifications. 62G05, 65J10PII. S003614299936175X1. Introduction and statement of the main problem. We study optimal discretizations of ill-posed problems in Hilbert scales. On the class of problems, which will be introduced in section 2, the best order of accuracy for a given noise level is well known. But this quantity does not take into account any discretization. Therefore we address two issues. First, can this best possible order of accuracy be achieved by discretized regularization methods? More precisely, we aim at presenting general conditions, which allow us to achieve this best possible order. This is made explicit for convergence analysis of corresponding schemes of Tikhonov regularization as well as for regularization by projection methods, self-regularization. In particular we pay attention to the limitations of self-regularization and indicate how these naturally occur when the design is given beforehand.A second issue to be addressed concerns the size, say, N = N (δ) of the design, necessary for a given noise level δ > 0, to enable best order of accuracy. This may be understood as the information complexity of the problem, since, in the asymptotic setting, no numerical method can achieve the best order of accuracy using fewer noisy observations. We establish the asymptotic behavior N (δ), δ → 0.We shall study ill-posed problems, where we wish to recover some element x from some real Hilbert space X from indirectly observed data near y = Ax, where A is some injective compact linear operator acting in a real Hilbert space Y . For the sake of convenience we will assume that X = Y , which can be obtained by isometries. Such linear inverse problems often arise in scientific context, ranging from stereological