What's New in the Top 100

For this month's reviews of new systems, click the links below.

• Top 20 Power Desktops
  
  
• Top 20 Budget Desktops
  
  
• Top 10 Notebook PCs
  
  
• Top 10 Home PCs
  
  

With all the ink Pentium-III systems have commanded in recent months, you might easily overlook the newest generation of Celeron chips Intel has been turning out. This month in Top 20 Budget Desktops, we take our first look at systems based on the Celeron-400 and also check out a Celeron-433­based PC. How did they do? Well, let's just say it looks like a Celeron's market.

Of the nine new Celeron-400 and -433 systems we tested this month, five scamper onto the chart, including two that earn Best Buys. Leading the way, Quantex's quick, feature-rich QP6/400 M-1c comes equipped with a 19-inch monitor and 4.8X DVD-ROM drive but costs only $1499--about average for a Top 20 budget desktop. Close on the heels of the Quantex is the $1199 CyberMax Entrepreneur C-400, which rates as the cheapest Celeron-400 of the bunch.

MidWest Micro's $1299 Office MWO-433C, powered by a Celeron-433 microprocessor, debuts at number 13. With a PC WorldBench 98 score of 190, it's the slowest Celeron-433 system the PC World Test Center has reviewed, but it offers a decent set of features and all-hours phone support. The $1526 Micron Millennia C433, a Celeron-433 system reviewed in Top 10 Home PCs, fares much better. It places third and boasts much better performance. The $1699 Umax PC PIII-454EZV--the first Pentium III-450 PC cheap enough to qualify for the budget category--missed the Top 20 desktops chart as a result of limited support and a poor price/performance ratio. Its speed equals only that of an average PII-450 PC with 128MB of RAM.

Beyond Celeron

Given the many varieties of Celeron-based PCs out there, what's a budget buyer to do? Take a look at "The Price of Speed" to gauge how well the average system equipped with various budget CPUs performs and what you can expect to pay for it.

Naturally, there's more to the charts than just the new Celeron-based PCs. Two Pentium II­equipped PCs earn Best Buys on the budget Top 20 this month, but new systems that use PII chips are becoming scarce. Many vendors we talked to either have eliminated Pentium II models altogether or plan to drop them soon.

Even so, a handful of Pentium II­based systems still rate as solid bargains. Witness NEC's $2069 PowerMate 8100: At a price $589 lower than in May, this corporate offering moves onto the power chart in ninth place. And price isn't the PowerMate's only alluring feature--it tallied a vigorous PC WorldBench 98 score of 218; and it comes with a network card, DMI management, and plenty of room for future expansion--three open drive bays and five free slots.

We also reviewed three new PCs that use AMD K6-2-400 CPUs, but only the $1299 IDot.com AMD K6-2-400 reaches the chart. Its PC WorldBench 98 score fell short of the Celeron-400 PCs above it.

Muscle Machines

For this month's power chart we reviewed seven new systems, only three of which did well enough to earn places in the Top 20. The most impressive rookie, Dell's $2649 OptiPlex GX1p 500, takes over the top slot. Continuing the OptiPlex line's tradition of strong, managed PCs for big businesses, this PIII-500 NT 4.0 workstation features DMI management, an integrated network card, and an interior made for easy upgrading.

Systems equipped with Pentium III-500 chips now thoroughly dominate the power chart--a trend that should become even more evident as the next few months go by. Currently, an even dozen of the Top 20 systems use Intel's fastest chip, which continues to sell for a premium price. The average cost of a chart-making PIII-500 system this month is $2629; this number represents a drop of a scant $73 from last month's average.

Not surprisingly, such expensive PCs typically come stocked with all the high-end components a buyer could hope for: 19-inch monitors, high-end graphics and sound cards, good speakers, and massive hard disks. If you're eager to obtain peak performance but don't need top-notch components, remember that custom configurations can shave hundreds of dollars off a system's price. Vendors' reliability and service records are another factor that differentiates these powerhouses; make sure to consider our ratings in these areas when you shop.

Appearances Count

This month's Top 10 Monitors chart shows some notable shifts, courtesy of modest price drops on existing units and the appearance of two impressive new models--Sony's CPD-220GS (which features great graphics performance) and LG's 790SC (which costs just $360). For its part, ViewSonic's PT775 rides a $30 price cut into first place, loosing the IBM P92's iron grip on the top position. Prices for 17-inch monitors have begun to stabilize; the average street price now hovers at $415.

Meanwhile, on the graphics board front, ATI's new Rage Fury graphics card delivers abundant speed and colorful images, but it suffered from flawed 3D visual quality in the PC World Test Center's evaluations: Some of the objects in our 3D gaming suite appeared grainy and banded. The board's software driver needs a bit of tweaking as well: The Rage Fury couldn't run our PowerPoint presentation or Caligari 3D modeling tests (ATI says a fix for the problem is imminent). Look for our retest of the board next month.