Bold type denotes first place. The Compaq and HP desktops tied for first on our ZD Business Winstone 99 tests. The HP also topped the field on Content Creation Winstone 2000, CPUmark, and Business Disk Winmark 99. The relatively high-end grahpics engine in the Compaq machine pushed it to first place on ZD Business Graphocs Winmark 99.
High scores are best.
The Compaq Prosignia, with it's nVida GeForce 256-based card, came out tops on all these tests. We tested each client desktop system running Windows 98 Second Edition with 128MB of RAM and 13GB or more of hard disk space. We stripped each system's start-up configuration of all processes or tasks except for Systray, Explorer, the graphics card control panel, and ActiveX controls. We defragmented the hard disk before each test and let Windows 98 manage virtual-memory settings. Before each run we cleared the history, deleted temporary Internet files, and rebooted to initialize the PCs, so prior caching of files would not affect results.