Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has increased the heat in the competitive personal computer market by launching a new CNY3999 computer for the Chinese market.

The price matches that of a model sold earlier this year by China's biggest seller Lenovo, which two weeks ago announced its purchase of IBM's (IBM) PC division.

HP's new model, part of its Pavilion series, features a central processing unit (CPU) from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) and a FreeDOS operating system, both cheaper alternatives to more popular CPUs from Intel (INTC) and the Windows operating system from Microsoft (MSFT).

According to Gartner, Lenovo accounted for 26.4% of China's unit PC sales in the third quarter, followed by domestic companies Founder Group at 10.3% and Tongfang at 8.7% Dell was fourth with 8.1%, followed by IBM at 6% and HP at 5.2%.