Striving to bring recognition to manufacturers of high-technology equipment, the iXBT.com editorial team decided to institute three awards:

Reviewed by iXBT.com

The Reviewed by iXBT.com award recognizes the products, which have gone through the iXBT.com lab tests. This award is presented to a manufacturer, whose products were tested in our lab, got reviewed, and their reviews are published on the iXBT.com web site, in the iXBT.com magazine, or on the Digit-Life.com web site.

Original Design

Modern IT market is flooded with clones. Life-cycle of a product became shorter, so most manufacturers do not spend their time and resources on their own designs. Instead, they often follow the so called "reference design", changing only the name of the product and the package appearance. That's why in order to encourage efforts of the manufacturers who create innovative products different from reference designs, the editorial team of iXBT.com institutes the Original Design award.

This award can be honored to a product with an original design, which is essentially different from the reference design. The product must be tested in the iXBT.com lab and then have a review (concerning the test results) published on the iXBT.com web site, in the iXBT.com magazine, or on the Digit-Life.com web site.

The Original Design award can be selected only once a month and must provide links to the reviews of the awarded products.

3D Video Cards Awards

A video card can be awarded with Original Design, if the tests revealed the following features distinguishing it from the reference design:

• Original cooling system, which is more effective at the least possible level of noise
• Support for extra features, such as Video-In (if it is not provided by the reference design)
• Other things that are not listed here

It goes without saying that, for example, a PCB color different from the reference design cannot be considered an innovation.

June 2005 Awards

Gainward PowerPack Ultra/2400PCX Golden Sample PCI-E

Motherboards Awards

A motherboard gets the Original Design award for one or a combination of the following design features:

• Passive (or active, but only if necessary!) cooling system for overheated motherboard elements
• Indication system for computer failures at startup
• Good PCB layout, which does not hamper assemblage and upgrade
• on-board buttons to power on or restart a computer, to reset CMOS, etc. — any feature that facilitates express-tests or repairs
• other things

We award only useful elements of design in our opinion: so, a stylish (or a monstrous) chipset cooler cannot be considered useful, if this chipset does not require mandatory active cooling. And the attractive design will not be awarded, if it offers no other advantages except for its good looks.

Of course, the above list does not contain all possible options (a lot of things cannot be foreseen at all) for a motherboard to get the award. Read the reviews of awarded models to find out the details and perhaps get acquainted with innovations on the market.

June 2005 Awards

ECS RS400-A motherboard is awarded for supporting two memory types (not simultaneously) and allowing to select one of three(!) types of graphics adapters

Excellent Package

It's always pleasant to buy a product and find out that the package includes additional equipment, software, games, souvenirs, etc. It's nice to think that the product you bought is well worth its price, and it's twice as nice to buy a well-bundled product at a moderate price. In practice, some manufacturers tend to save on every item, even if the inclusion of this item into the product package raises the price by less than 10%. Thus, the editorial team of iXBT.com institutes the Excellent Package award to bring recognition to those manufacturers, who offer nice boxes with excellent package content (the product plus useful accessories) instead of featureless boxes with minimal package content (CD with drivers).

This award can be presented to a product with an original box and unique package content. The product must be tested in the iXBT.com lab, and the results of these tests must be published in a review on the iXBT.com web site, the iXBT.com magazine, or the Digit-Life.com web site.

The Excellent Package award can be selected only once a month and must refer to the awarded product reviews.

Motherboards Awards

A motherboard merits the Excellent Package award, if it features some of the following bundle elements:

• Original attractive package
• Colorful and detailed User's Guides
• A full set of necessary cables, preferably gathered in a tight bunch (for multi-cored cables)
• Various brackets to expand functionality (for additional and/or missing FireWire/USB/COM/LPT ports; for audio features of the motherboard, including optical and coaxial digital inputs and outputs; etc)
• Additional original accessories (USB drives, wireless adapters, etc)
• A rich set of third-party software (free of charge), proprietary utilities for monitoring, BIOS management, etc
• Other things

June 2005 Awards

Gigabyte 8I955X Royal motherboard is awarded for its complete bundle option with U-Plus DPS and BTD02 USB adapter

Additional information

The same award cannot be given to a product more than once.

A product can get several different awards.

Printed award certificates can be provided by written request via e-mail: pr@ixbt.com