I would love some advice regarding SSAA vs CMAA2.
I have read in multiple places that SSAA (or setting the render scale higher than native) is a far superior AA method and that if your GPU can handle it, it’s best to go with SSAA instead of the other options.
However, in my case, increasing the render scale to 4K and disabling the “less superior” AA techniques results in more noticeable jaggies than with CMAA2 and multisampling set to 8x/8x. Am I doing something wrong with these settings?
MSAA already provides a similar resulting image quality to SSAA outside of specific circumstances when comparing like-for-like. This is why it even became a thing 20 years ago (though 3DFX introduced edge anti-aliasing as early as 1995) as it does so while suffering a much, much lower performance overhead. You’re not comparing like-for-like, though - 8x MSAA is roughly the same as setting the Render Scale to 283%, which you cannot do in WoW (at least via the UI - I’ve not tried with console commands).
You’re then applying a post-processing AA over the top of this, further cleaning up any of the edges that it may have missed. These missed edges will only really include things like some shader effects and transparent textures - the latter of which would only be the case if you don’t have MSAA Alpha Test enabled. Since the geometry is already clean, though, it’s probably not the deciding factor.
This is generally true, in the sense that SSAA is the most “pristine” anti-aliasing option available. It’s a very brute-force technique of running at a higher resolution, and sampling that down. SSAA can give you sharper image quality in general, and should be roughly as effective as MSAA at removing jagged edges. MSAA is basically “selective” SSAA where it’ll only render more pixels for e.g. geometry edges.
MSAA 8x will be more effective at removing most jagged edges than SSAA 4x, and CMAA2 as a post-process technique will be variable.
Render scale in WoW can be paired with other AA techniques, however. You can use a higher render scale plus MSAA and/or CMAA2. CMAA2 is also unique as a post-process technique because it can be effectively combined with MSAA, which is untrue of many other post-process AA options.
I usually run at 200% render scale with CMAA2, which provides amazing results. I’m running into some weird performance issues with that currently, however. With render scale set to anything higher than 100%, liquid detail at “good” or higher cuts my FPS by over 50% in many areas. Opening certain windows such as the character pane has a similar effect.