MPC (Micron PC) MPC Millennia 920i Creative Studio

MPC's light-gray-and-off-white midsize tower, with matching monitor and keyboard, should blend well into any home or office decor. It's a nicely designed PC that has the horsepower for almost any general-purpose, power-computing application.

The Millennia 920i Creative Studio's performance falls in line with similarly configured systems we've tested. Powered by a 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 processor (Intel's fastest P4 to date) and a gigabyte of DDR400 SDRAM, it earned a moderately quick PC WorldBench 4 score of 127. Still, that's about 10 percent slower than the fastest AMD Athlon XP-based machines the 920i is competing with.

Graphics performance fared well: Equipped with a 256MB NVidia GeForce FX 5950 graphics card and running the demanding Return to Castle Wolfenstein at 1280-by-1024-pixel resolution and 32-bit color depth (the LCD panel's limit), the 920i generated images at over 100 frames per second. The roomy 19-inch MPC F1925 LCD accepts both digital and analog video signals. Tested in analog mode (we didn't receive a DVI cable with our unit, although the vendor says it will supply one with the system), it displayed rich-looking colors and sharp text on our test screens. And DVD movie images looked smooth in high-action scenes in Star Wars Episode I.

True to its name, the Creative Studio is well equipped for working with video. Our test system came with 4X DVD±RW and 52X CD-RW drives, plus twin 160GB hard drives in a RAID 0 array. MPC also included an Iomega Zip 750 drive--something we've rarely seen in recent systems. Pinnacle Studio 8.5, a full-featured package that lets you edit, author, and burn video, completes the package. Beyond video, MPC also bundled Microsoft's Office XP Small Business Edition and Roxio's PhotoSuite 5 (for editing, organizing, and sharing photos).

The 920i is simple and functional to use. Our unit came with a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse. Of the 8 USB 2.0 ports, two are located on the front panel, along with audio input and output ports. The ports sit several inches above floor level, making them fairly easy to reach. The system has an abundance of FireWire ports: one on the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card, and three on a separate expansion card.

The side panel of the MPC case pops off easily, exposing an interior nicely designed for servicing and upgrades. Removing the side panel releases an expansion card cover plate, which lets you add or replace expansion cards without a screwdriver. The configuration stuffed into this midsize tower, however, leaves relatively few upgrade capabilities--only two bays, one external and one internal, are free. And we found only one unused PCI slot: Of the five slots, one is covered by the cooling shroud for the graphics card, one is used by the modem, and the sound card and the FireWire PCI use up two more. When the time does come to upgrade, the easy-to-use, colorful PDF manual offers helpful sections on system upgrades and troubleshooting.

Upshot: With storage galore, a big-screen LCD, and a useful software bundle, the 920i Creative Studio is an apt machine for power users who want a Pentium-based PC.

Mick Lockey