Engadget
Anti-aliasing makes jagged game graphics look smoother, but some methods hit your GPU much harder than others.
If you could get 4x or 8x MSAA without making your game look like a slideshow, you were doing well.
Fortunately, they all tackle a similar issue. Games have to represent curved and diagonal edges on a grid of square pixels, which can result in stair-step patterns called "jaggies." Anti-aliasing smooths those rough edges, but there are several ways to do it.
Some ask your GPU to compute more samples. Others filter the image after it's been rendered, while newer temporal techniques use information from previous frames. The idea is cleaner edges, but there is usually a compromise, such as lower frame rates, softer details or occasional ghosting.
SSAA takes the brute-force approach, rendering the image at a higher resolution before downsampling it to the final resolution.
MSAA is a bit more reasonable.
MSAA primarily addresses geometry edges, while aliasing from materials, textures and transparent surfaces can remain. Epic's current Unreal Engine documentation supports MSAA only with the forward renderer, not its desktop deferred renderer.
FXAA and SMAA come at the problem after the frame has been rendered.
TAA brings previous frames into the picture.
Two anti-aliasing methods can appear almost the same in a paused screenshot, while panning the camera can reveal shimmering, blur or ghost trails almost instantly.
Intel's XeSS also has a Native Anti-Aliasing mode that works at native resolution.