With Intel leading the performance race, AMD fights well on price, occupying the competitive end of the home PC market around the £1,000 mark. Mesh's Matrix XP 2000+SB Plus is an excellent example of how you can get a fully-featured home PC with plenty of change from £1,000.

The basic specifications of the Mesh are very impressive. Performance freaks may bemoan the fact that the processor isn't the fastest Athlon and the graphics card is a mere GeForce 4 440MX. But astute buyers will look at the bigger picture and see a very sensible system. The AMD Athlon 2000 XP processor is a fantastic performer for the money.

With 80GB of hard disk space available, there's no pressure on storage space.

The CD-RW drive is very fast, writing discs at 40-speed and spitting out a 74-minute music disc in under two minutes. The DVD-Rom drive comes with appropriate decoding software for watching a few films.

The 17in NEC monitor is first-class and the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy is a superb piece of kit for both games and films. With the 5300 Creative speakers, you can make many home hi-fis sound pretty ordinary.

The set-up of the system is kept as simple as possible by Mesh's excellent documentation. If you're in the market for a new PC, look no further than this. Price: £899
Contact: Mesh Computers
www.meshcomputers.com