Official reviews of the Matrox Parhelia are now hitting the streets, after yesterday's goof by the German edition of Tom's Hardware. You can see reviews at Tom's Hardware, GamePC, AnandTech and Tech Report. Even with these additional impressions, the conclusions are the same. The card does not compete with the ATI Radeon 8500 or GeForce 4. Of course, Matrox is pushing features over raw speed, but that doesn't change the fact that this card costs $399. Here's a bit on anti-aliasing performance

If Parhelia's 16x FAA mode would work properly, then it would be superior with regard to quality. NVIDIA's 4x mode is slower and has poorer results. By contrast, the GeForce 4 reveals superior performance in Quincunx mode, which provides a good compromise. If you're looking for optimal FSAA quality, then Parhelia is definitely the first choice. However, the Parhelia's very poor SuperSampling performance is disappointing, because considering the high memory bandwidth, it should have done much better.