Different types of aa

[Semi1114]

What is difference between fxaa, txaa, mxaa, etc.?

[calarahil]

TXAA is a standard that goes along with nvidia kepler cards. Its mean't to be a less strain based form of AA. I'm not to sure on the others but there is SSAA,  MSAA. 

[calarahil]

1. Super-Sampled Anti-Aliasing (SSAA). The oldest trick in the book - I list it as universal because you can use it pretty much anywhere: forward or deferred rendering, it also anti-aliases alpha cutouts, and it gives you better texture sampling at high anisotropy too. Basically, you render the image at a higher resolution and down-sample with a filter when done. Sharp edges become anti-aliased as they are down-sized. Of course, there's a reason why people don't use SSAA: it costs a fortune. Whatever your fill rate bill, it's 4x for even minimal SSAA.

2. Multi-Sampled Anti-Aliasing (MSAA). This is what you typically have in hardware on a modern graphics card. The graphics card renders to a surface that is larger than the final image, but in shading each "cluster" of samples (that will end up in a single pixel on the final screen) the pixel shader is run only once. We save a ton of fill rate, but we still burn memory bandwidth. This technique does not anti-alias any effects coming out of the shader, because the shader runs at 1x, so alpha cutouts are jagged. This is the most common way to run a forward-rendering game. MSAA does not work for a deferred renderer because lighting decisions are made after the MSAA is "resolved" (down-sized) to its final image size.

3. Coverage Sample Anti-Aliasing (CSAA). A further optimization on MSAA from NVidia [ed: ATI has an equivalent]. Besides running the shader at 1x and the framebuffer at 4x, the GPU's rasterizer is run at 16x. So while the depth buffer produces better anti-aliasing, the intermediate shades of blending produced are even better.

quote from http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/31801/what-are-the-differences-between-the-different-anti-aliasing-multisampling-set

 

There is also this guide and man this is the best place to go :)

http://www.overclock.net/t/1329979/anti-aliasing-the-basics