A method and system for performing multi-sample, antialiased rendering of images by performing multi-sample antialiasing at the primitive level. Geometric primitives used to represent a graphics environment are set-up, and then shifted by a sub-pixel offset and rendered to generate values for pixels of an intermediate image. The shifting and rendering is repeated for the geometric primitive, each time generating values for pixels of another intermediate image. The values for the pixels of the intermediate images are combined to produce values for the respective pixels of the resulting image.