Yeah, ME/98 are usually faster in that area.
I use the latest drivers for Nvidia cards, currently the 12.00 Dets.
Doing some tweaks will help, but it all depends on the system. One of the best tweaking utilites you can get your hands on is Xteq X-Setup. It has tweaks for Win2k/98/ME/NT, and they are very good.
There's even a tweak to optimize the L2 cache for the cpu.
That Asus board is about as good as it gets.
I would suggest getting the ram up to 256MB at least, 384 is better, and I havent seen any improvements after that.
To check for hardware conflicts, just check device manager. Any conflicting hardware will have yellow exclaimation point by it.

and the latest news is.......
When it comes to FPS in demo or benchmarking software this has nearly always been the case.
However where it really matters, in games, the difference is very rarely noticeable (Average 5-8fps drop)
Also, move over to the far more up to date 3DMark2001.
When combined with the detonator 12 drivers the difference is non existant.

Me is a far more lightweight OS than 2K and thus you can expect it to run faster on intensive stuff

Joosman that sig is disgusting BUT i didnt come here to say stuff about peoples sigs. Ive seen MANY 3dmark 2k and 3dmark 2k1 benchmarks and in 3dM2k Win2k always comes out lagging behind ME, but in 3dmark 2k1 they show up pretty evenly. Also the drivers you are using on both systems are VERY old, the 6.50 and 6.18's were distributed before Nov of 2k. I suggest you get the 12's or if you want WHQL certified then the 7.58's are good though i like the 12's the best because they have support for GF 3 and the new GeForce 2 MX cards which mean they are more stable (hopefully sometimes they arent) and have better optimizations for CPU instruction sets and stuff like that. But they are stable for some people un for others thus the reason they arent WHQL. Either way i would rather just keep an install of 2k on my system (XP in my case but still) and play the games using a HIGH priority setting on 2k rather than the normal on ME. Besides a difference isnt that noticable unless you have a Radon then there is a big drop because ATIs drivers are the bottom of the barrel.

Exasperated: Why even care about 9x results, 9x is keich, I had a dual boot between Me and 2K Pro until I realised I wasn't using Me. Ever. So I replaced it with 2K Advanced Server. When you look at 9x compared to NT/2K line, they just look so empty and full of nothingness, you just can't do anything with them, the memory management isn't as good, they crash more often, they aren't as secure (any program can write to the Windows dir or registry without asking for example)
All of you with 9x on your hard drives, get it off. Convert the volume to NTFS, and enjoy computing as it was meant to be, uptime as long as you want and no BSOD.
 
Microsoft were right to do that advert, you know, cut out and keep this BSOD, cause with Windows 2000 you won't ever see them again.

Thanks guys for all your replies...i guess i'll give the newer dets a try(im lazy and dont like changing them too often ). And yes i know 2k destroys Me in almost every aspect but my friend gave me a copy of 2000 and for some reason it doesnt have the boot loader so i have to have a 9x os on my machine in order to install 2k . but then again every now and then Me will come in handy at the LAN parties when for whatever reason 2000 becomes a punk and my games glitch (ever notice problems only start happening when you start the LAN party!!!!!?). As for the baby joke i just thought id give it a whirl and lighten up the forum.
 
Q:What does Snoop Doggy Dog wash his clothes with?
A:Bleeeee-aaaaaach.

yeah its always the night before you have a paper due that your HD crashes or the day your going to a LAN party your vid card dies, Or when you cant even press the show desktop item in your quicklaunch bar without explorer crashing (oh wait sorry that last one was just me *****ing to myself about this POS box here at school with Win98 on it). Yeah its always the important times when stuff breaks. ;(