What does anti-aliasing actually do to your PC games?

Anti-aliasing smooths jagged edges on pixel grids using methods ranging from brute-force supersampling to temporal techniques that utilize previous frames. While SSAA and MSAA demand significant GPU resources, post-processing options like FXAA, SMAA, and TAA offer performance trade-offs involving image softness or ghosting. Modern native-resolution solutions from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel further refine these visual results.