Anti-Aliasing (AA)

Post Process Technique. FXAA is a "quick and dirty" AA solution. While FXAA has a relatively small performance impact, this technique is not as effective at smoothing jagged lines as some of the other technologies. For this reason, it is best when there are minor aliasing issues and you are already at high resolutions such as 1440p and 4K.

Post Process Technique. SMAA offers superior quality in anti-aliasing through a better form of edge detection. This method rights the wrongs of FXAA, while demanding a little more compute power. SMAA is best when FXAA isn't satisfactory and you want to avoid the issues associated with TAA.

Post Process Technique. TAA has become sort of a "default" for many modern games - to some people's great displeasure. This method uses motion information from previous frames to intelligently blur lines in the current frame. Unfortunately, this can introduce "ghosting" - shapes and lines from previous frames being carried over into subsequent frames (where they don't belong).

TAA is famous for it's "blurred lines" presentation, but often strikes a good balance of aliasing removal and reasonable performance impact. TAA is best when you want this balance, but sometimes can have ghosting effects.

Rendering Technique. MSAA is very different from SMAA, despite the easy-to-miss two-letter flip. This method renders edges and lines at a higher resolution then downsamples it to your output resolution. It is effective at smoothing edges, but comes with a framerate loss. MSAA is best when you are already getting high framerates, and want a reasonably effective AA method.

Rendering Technique. Sometimes just referred to as "Super-sampling", SSAA is the gold standard of AA, but it comes at great cost. This method is an expansion of the concept discussed in MSAA and instead renders the entire scene at a higher resolution, then downsamples it to your output resolution. The output is a superior quality image, but the downside is a significant framerate drop. This method is best when you have the compute power to handle it and still have an enjoyable framerate.