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With solid performance and a good price, ABS's Performance Ti 500 remains our power Best Buy. But it has some stiff competition: Falcon Northwest leads four newcomers onto the power chart. For gamers who want smoking performance and have money to burn, the Mach V Athlon 2000 delivers--but at a heart-stopping price of $4095. It landed a PC WorldBench 4 score of 126, the highest we've seen so far from a home PC, and it comes with a 22-inch monitor and a set of six speakers.

In third place just below the Falcon, Compaq's latest Presario, the 8000Z, is a well-equipped computer for budding video directors. Our test 8000Z came with a DVD-RW drive and a handy IEEE 1394 port on the front for importing home movies from a camcorder. Add to that Sonic Solutions' DVDit video editing software and a 120GB hard drive, and you have an amateur's movie studio in a box.

At number four, the Polywell Poly 880K7 is reasonably priced for a system with an Athlon XP 1800+ processor and a great-looking 18-inch LCD monitor. It also comes with a large software bundle containing, among other programs, the games Deus Ex, Giants, and Sacrifice.

Sony's innovative and very stylish VAIO PCV-MXS10, in the fifth slot, is a multimedia marvel, with a DVD-RW drive, a radio and TV tuner, and a built-in MiniDisc player and recorder. But all those extras add up: At $3399, the PCV-MXS10 costs as much as significantly faster PCs.

Squeaking in at number eight on the value chart, the Gateway Profile 3CX's all-in-one design fits in a small office but lacks the expandability of a full-size system. It comes with a 15-inch LCD monitor and a 16X/10X/40X CD-RW drive.

Visit find.pcworld.com/19301 for reviews of all products ranked in this chart or tested this month.

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