We installed both Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows ME one after another on a clean, formatted hard drive, and since we also wanted to test the performance of these OS's right out of the box, we decided just to install newer versions of the video card, and nothing else. Installing newer versions of the video card drivers were necessary as the default ones that came with both OS's didn't properly support OpenGL, which is what some of our tests use. Here is a detailed table on our system configurations:

	Windows 98 SE	Windows ME
CPU	AMD Athlon ("Classic") 650MHz
Motherboard	ASUS K7M (AMD "Irongate" 751)
Memory	192MB "Generic" PC100 SDRAM
Video	PowerColor nVidia Riva TNT2 Pro (nVidia Reference Drivers - 3.77*)
Hard Drive	IBM Deskstar 34GXP 20GB (7200RPM, ATA-66)
Sound	Sound Blaster Live! Value (Liveware! 3.0)
CD-ROMs	Panasonic 24X Acer CD-RW 6x2x2x
Network	Realtech 10BaseT Network Interface Card
Windows	Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition 4.10.2222 A	Microsoft Windows Me 4.90.3000
Drivers	nVidia Reference Driver v3.77* Creative LiveWare! 3.0
Other Software	Quake III Arena with Point Release 1.17 MadOnion 3DMark2000 (build 340)

* nVidia Reference driver version 3.77 works the best (performance and reliability) on this particular card.

Before we move on, I must include that I was unable to obtain a copy of ZDNet's WinStone 2000 or Content Creation WinStone 2000 in time for this review, so results in this review are more geared towards gamers as my other tests all stress the most on video performance.

On to: Start Up and Shut Down