A newly developed X-ray technique is used, which is able to quantitatively combine texture, structure, anisotropic crystallite shape and film thickness analyses of nanocrystalline silicon films. The films are grown by reactive magnetron sputtering in a plasma mixture of H-2 and Ar onto amorphous SiO2 and single-crystal (100)-Si substrates. Whatever the used substrate, preferred orientations are observed with texture strengths around 2-3 times a random distribution, with a tendency to achieve lower strengths for films grown on SiO2 substrates. As a global trend, anisotropic shapes and textures are correlated with longest crystallite sizes along the <111> direction but absence of <111> oriented crystallites. Cell parameters are systematically observed larger than the value for bulk silicon, by approximately 0.005-0.015 Angstrom. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.