HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2011 Editor's Choice - Part 2

Tech Awards 2011 - A Blast of a Party!

By now, you should have seen our results of the Reader's Choice polls, and the first installment of our Editor's Choice articles. The second and final part of our Editor's Choice shifts to personal computing products; but before that, here's a highlight video and some pictures of the awards ceremony that was held on 23rd February, from 3.30pm to 5pm at Fullerton Hotel, Level 4 Straits Room.

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More Photos from the Awards Ceremony

After the Tech Awards 2011 Ceremony

Although the award ceremony ended at about 5pm, many guests stayed back at the tea reception for a light-hearted networking session at the Level 5 Roof Garden.

While things were getting slightly busy outside, the video team worked hard as they went around and interviewed some guests about their afterthoughts about the event. Here's a couple of them:-

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Now that you've seen what had transpired during the awards ceremony, it's time to continue with the concluding portion of our Editor's Choice article. So hit the Next button as we show you the computing products we rated as the best of 2010.

*Note: Prices and ratings listed in this article are accurate at the time of individual product evaluation.

Best Desktop CPU

With both AMD and Intel releasing 6-core processors in 2010, their flagship 6-core processor models represent the best for desktop CPUs and that's where we start our search for the best desktop CPU in 2010. Unfortunately, the difference in CPU architecture between the two platforms means that one finds Intel's US$1000 Core i7-980X Extreme Edition going against AMD's US$229 Phenom II X6 1090T 'Black Edition'.

Nominees:

• Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition
• AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 'Black Edition'

And the Winner Is...

Like the , it's a mismatch of epic proportions, as the Intel processor is not only significantly more costly, it actually lives up to its price tag with a performance level beyond that of AMD. Whether one considers a system suite benchmark like SYSmark 2007 or a multi-threaded benchmark like Cinebench 10, the Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition was dominant. If you need any more persuasion, here are three selected benchmarks and how the two processors fared head-to-head.

Even accounting for other factors like power consumption and overclocking, the Intel processor was definitely the stronger contender and deservedly gets our nod for the best desktop CPU in 2010. The table below illustrates how the two processors fared in our various criteria, ranging from performance to value. The prices quoted are the figures at the time of the review.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

Best Mainstream Motherboard for Intel (Intel H55)

2010 saw the first attempt by Intel to integrate a graphics processing core to its processors. These 32nm Clarkdale processors come with Intel HD Graphics and while the level of integration for the graphics core doesn't come close to its 2011 followup, the recently launched Intel Sandy Bridge architecture, it's more than adequate for the mainstream users that are its target audience.

To fully utilize the integrated graphics core, these Clarkdale processors must be installed in a chipset based on Intel's H55 or H57 Express chipsets, which have the requisite display outputs. The H55 Express chipset, with its consumer slant, is accordingly the mainstream Intel chipset for this category. With many models to select from, we have taken some of the best models from each major vendor, taking in consideration the performance, features and value.

Nominees:

• ASRock H55M Pro
• ASUS P7H55-M PRO
• ECS H55H-M
• Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3
• Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H
• Intel DH55TC
• MSI H55M-ED55

And the Winner Is...

While we have a variety of form factors to choose from, these board vendors managed to put their own unique touches to their products. The ASUS P7H55-M PRO comes with its proprietary technologies like TurboV; the ASRock H55M Pro has a unique dual set of mounting holes such that upgraders can continue to use their LGA775 coolers on this LGA1156 board; the MSI H55M-ED55 is a very capable board that scored in our power efficiency tests and with MSI's OC Genie technology.

However it is the Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 that stands out for leading the rest of the H55 cohort in terms of performance. Despite its mini-ITX form factor, it packs sufficient features to impress us, including USB 3.0 ports. The BIOS even caters to enthusiasts with overclocking options equal to Gigabyte's standard boards. Although it is a bit more costly than some of the other H55 boards, it's worth paying for and gets our vote for the Best Mainstream Intel motherboard.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

Best Mainstream Motherboard for AMD (AMD 890GX)

While there has not been a major shift in CPU architecture on the AMD front last year, there have been new, updated chipsets that crucially, trump Intel in having SATA 6Gbps support first. The mainstream AMD 890GX chipset is a minor upgrade over the AMD 790GX, with a slightly improved graphics core that has a newer UVD and support for DX10.1. And of course it has SATA 6Gbps, though USB 3.0 is still unavailable except through third-party solutions.

Nominees:

• ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3
• ECS A890GXM-A
• Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H
• Jetway HA09
• MSI 890GXM-G65

And the Winner Is...

The ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 gets our nod for the best AMD 890GX board this year. It was one of the first to introduce a feature to unlock the hidden cores on AMD processors. The layout was one of the best we have seen and ASUS has augmented it with USB 3.0 support. Other factors like overclocking and power consumption also favored it, which made it an easy choice for Best Mainstream AMD board.

Other boards that grabbed our attention include the Jetway HA09, which had an interesting mini PCIe slot, but was let down by a poor layout and uncompetitive pricing. MSI's 890GXM-G65 was another close contender, but this mATX board that suffers slightly from the limitations of its form factor. MSI has also opted for its OC Genie Lite feature, which is less useful than the full-fledged OC Genie.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end. 

Best DDR3 Memory (DDR3-1600MHz Low Voltage)

2010 also saw the entry of various memory modules touting their eco credentials. Since DDR3-1600MHz appears to be a mainstream choice for consumers for at least another year, we gathered some of these low voltage DDR3-1600MHz memory modules (rated between 1.35 to 1.5V) for our roundup.

Nominees:

• G.Skill Eco DDR3-1600MHz kit
• Kingmax Hercules DDR3-1600MHz kit
• Kingston HyperX DD3 LoVo kit
• OCZ DR3 PC3-12800 Reaper Ultra Low Voltage CL7 kit

And the Winner Is...

OCZ's Reaper Ultra Low Voltage kit is the best DDR3-1600MHz low voltage memory mainly for its overclocking capability. It did well in our benchmarks and took the lead for both temperature and overclocking. For the enthusiast that may dabble in overclocking, it's the best compromise between that and eco-friendliness. It is no doubt the more expensive memory module of the comparison, but it's worth the price.

We also have to give special mention to Kingmax's Hercules, which was one of the more interesting contenders, thanks to its Nano Thermal Dissipation technology. Its lack of a proper heatspreader however meant that it eventually lost out to the OCZ in terms of overclocking. However, for its excellent price and good performance, it still stands out as a great choice.

Some of the relevant benchmarks we used in the testing:

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end. 

Best Mainstream Graphics Chip

Sure, having a super fast card like the a GeForce GTX 580 is great, but for most folks, there’s simply no good justification for plonking half a grand’s worth for a graphics card. To fill the gap, NVIDIA finally introduced their long awaited GeForce GTX 460, a truly brand new mainstream part. For AMD’s part, the newly introduced Radeon HD 6850 is leading their mainstream offensive. While NVIDIA has a matured 3D ecosystem, AMD touts the ease of which one can use the Radeon HD 6850 to setup multi-monitor configurations. But which is really the best? We find out.

Nominees:

• AMD Radeon HD 6850
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460

And the Winner Is...

The Radeon HD 6850 is AMD’s latest mainstream card and although it was a decent performer, it didn’t do much to improve on its predecessor. And even though it was launched a good three months after the GeForce GTX 460, the NVIDIA card still remained very competitive, even if it lagged behind in certain benchmarks. 

On the other hand, the GeForce GTX 460 was the more impressive and important part. Ever since the GeForce 9800 GT, NVIDIA has yet to have a proper, new mainstream card. The GeForce GTS 250, as some of you may recalled, was actually a GeForce GTX 9800 GTX+ with a new name. Hence, the GeForce GTX 460 is NVIDIA’s first proper mainstream card for some time. And at the time of launch, it blew away the competition with its attractive blend of performance, efficiency and price, with many proclaiming it to be the best thing to come out from NVIDIA in a long time. Not surprisingly, many avid gamers and bargain hunters scrambled to get their hands on one.

For the impact it made and its competent all-round performance, the GeForce GTX 460 gets the nod as this year’s best mainstream graphics chip.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

Best Mainstream AMD Graphics Card

Launched along side the more powerful Radeon HD 6870, the new Radeon HD 6850 marks a new generation of graphics cards for AMD. And although it’s not blazing fast, it offers a credible mid to high-end gaming performance and is a good alternative to NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460. And as part of AMD’s new , the Radeon HD 6850 also gets useful features such as EyeFinity and HDMI 1.4 ports for integrating into existing the 3D ecosystem. We attempted to find out the best Radeon HD 6850 card of the past year.

Nominees:

• ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU
• Gigabyte HD 6850
• MSI R6850-PM2DIGD5
• PowerColor PCS+ HD 6850
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6850
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition
• XFX Radeon HD 6850 Black Edition

And the Winner Is...

Our winner for best mainstream AMD graphics card is Sapphire's Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition. Admittedly, it has since been overshadowed by newer releases, but the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition was one of the first Radeon HD 6850 cards to feature a formidable combination of features and performance at the point of evaluation. To sum up, the Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic Edition was not only a tad quicker than reference versions of the Radeon HD 6850, but it has an efficient cooler and impressive overclocking potential, and that was enough to push it above the competition.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

Best Mainstream NVIDIA Graphics Card

When we first got our hands on NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460, we were pleasantly surprised by what it offered. Powered by the redesigned GF104 chip, it provided competitive performance, attractive price and much improved power and thermal characteristics. Hence, not only was the GeForce GTX 460 the first truly new mainstream part for NVIDIA since the GeForce 9800 GT, it was also the best thing to come from NVIDIA for some time and not surprisingly, the GeForce GTX 460 marked a turn for fortunes for NVIDIA and its much beleaguered Fermi architecture.

Needless to say, NVIDIA’s partners capitalized on this efficient chip by releasing many custom and factory overclocked versions of the GeForce GTX 460. And we are here to find out which is best.

Nominees:

• ASUS ENGTX 460 DirectCU TOP
• ECS GeForce GTX 460 Black
• Gainward GeForce GTX 460 Golden Sample GLH
• Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 Super OC
• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 SOC
• Manli GeForce GTX 460
• MSI N460GTX Hawk
• Palit GeForce GTX 460 Sonic Platinum
• Sparkle Calibre X460G
• Zotac GeForce GTX 460 AMP! Edition

And the Winner Is...

In face of such stiff competition, the MSI N460GTX Hawk was, for us, the best all-rounder. Because of its slightly more modest clock speeds, it may not be the fastest card out of the box, but its performance is still very competitive. However, it makes up with its outstanding overclocking performance, achieving an incredible 950MHz at the core and 4000MHz DDR at the memory, and so it gets our Most Overclockable Award. This is testament to the technologies that MSI has implemented on this card to make it so efficient. We were also very impressed with its Twin Frozr II cooler, which managed to keep the card running at only 51 degrees Celsius at load, a tremendous improvement over a reference card’s 67 degrees Celsius. All in all, it was the most well-rounded card of the bunch and therefore most deserving of our award.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

Best 2.5-inch Portable External HDD

Portable external hard drives are one of the most sought after personal computing products. Everyone needs storage to house their content produced or downloaded. Programs, patches, updates, media -  everything is getting larger in size as our expectations in quality rises ever higher. To top that, we need to backup of our data and sometimes, backup the backups. In this Tech Awards 2011, we once again compared a variety of new 2.5-inch portable external hard drives that fit our selection timeline. We chose a capacity point of 500GB that is popular as well as offering the widest variety of drives.

Nominees

• Buffalo MiniStation 500GB (HD-PXT500U2/B-EU)
• Hitachi LifeStudio Mobile Plus 500GB
• Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Pro 500GB
• Toshiba Portable HDD (Art series) 500GB
• WD My Passport Essential (with USB 3.0 / 2.0)
• 
  

And the Winner is...

Although a couple of drives tested supported USB 3.0, we chose to test all of them at USB 2.0 speeds since the majority of users are still on this interface. Besides, at this point of time, USB 3.0 implementation is fairly standard across the board and it just depends if a user wishes to pay more for a USB 3.0 capable drive or not. 

From our suite of performance testing, Buffalo's MiniStation HD-PXT came out tops in benchmarks, even surpassing last year's Verbatim's Executive Portable drive consistently. Buffalo's secret is in their Turbo drivers that ships with this series of drives and it seems to be living up to its name. So for the vast majority who've yet to embrace USB 3.0 equipped systems, Buffalo's drives give a performance edge over all others - provided that you install the Turbo drivers.

Not only was it tops in performance, but it was tops in features:- Backup software, built-in drive encryption, shock-proof build, built-in USB cable, an extension USB cable and a visible hard drive activity indicator LED. It is a tad larger than the competition in size and bulk, but it's still a very portable drive and far less bulky than the Hitachi SimpleTough we evaluated a year earlier. While the competition this time round all had interesting aspects and features of their own, the Buffalo MiniStation HD-PXT offers the most for your money and it is our preferred choice.

Other notable options for consideration are the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Pro and Hitachi LifeStudio Mobile Plus for their versatility and unique features too.

As usual our selective choice of benchmarks and scoring table are enclosed here for your viewing.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end of this article.

Best Solid State Drive

Solid State Drives (SSDs) are getting ever more popular among DIY enthusiast who have cash to splurge. Clearly, people are realizing that a system is only as fast as the slowest component in it. In today's context, it's almost always your choice of storage, which is typically a hard disk drive. With the maturity of SSD drives in the later half of 2010, more SSD units are being released with advanced firmware to better improve performance, reliability and embracing TRIM command support  among others.

For our comparison, we selected the best drives released last year that have a storage capacity of about 60GB. This is adequate to install the OS and a few key programs for the purpose of a performance boot drive.

Nominees

• Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB
• Kingston SSDNow V+ 100 Series 64GB
• OCZ Vertex 2 60GB
• Patriot Inferno 60GB
• WD SiliconEdge Blue 64GB
• 
  

And the Winner is...

The popular Intel X25-M Gen.2 drive was put out of competition as it doesn't qualify as a product launched between December 2009 and November 2010. Apart from the Intel drive, the buzz was on SandForce controller based drives that have a unique feature - data compression. For compressible data, SandForce equipped drives can actually cram much more data in memory cells, thus the illusion of the drive having much higher throughput. The net result is that it does perform better, but not when it's dealing with incompressible data.  Both OCZ and Patriot drives featured these controllers and as we predicted, performance was great in some tests but only above average in others. Overall, they were good drives, but were bested by Crucial's RealSSD C300 drive.

Crucial's drive had very temperamental beginnings, but the company constantly improved this Marvell 88SS9174 controller equipped drive with excellent firmware updates. The result of which we saw in our in-depth testing with more consistent results. It wasn't necessarily the drive with the best write performance in all benchmarks, but it did fare pretty well in general. Besides good performance, it boasts of 128MB buffer, TRIM and Garbage Collection features, and the only drive that can take advantage of SATA 6Gbps. All of these contributed to the C300 drive getting top spot in our books. If you've a SATA 6Gbps based system, which is quite likely for anyone building a new system since last year, this drive can give you the added read performance for an even better performance boot drive.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end of this article.

Best 2-bay NAS Device

For the geek with loads of videos, digital photographs and other data, getting down and dirty with a NAS (Network Attached Storage) box can be a very convenient way to keep all that digital clutter in one organized space. Whether streaming music to your networked music player, or high-definition movies and videos to your brand new Full HD flat screen, or even for hosting a simple home-based web server, getting yourself a NAS is but the first step towards your ideal networked home entertainment setup.

Nominees:

• Buffalo LinkStation Pro Duo LS-WVL
• D-Link DNS-320 ShareCenter Pulse
• Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 2 RNDU2000
• QNAP TS-219P+
• Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220
• Synology DiskStation DS211
• Thecus N2200+

And the Winner Is...

Synology lands the top prize with the DS211 taking home the honors in our testing. While the DS211 is by no means a high-end NAS to begin with, it delivered excellent performance to top our performance benchmarks, combined with a selection of features as well as price tag of S$490 that was hard to beat. On the other hand, the QNAP TS-219P+ came real close to dethroning the DS211, and is worth investing in if eSATA and hot-swappable drives are key attraction points for you.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

Best Full HD 23/24-inch LED-backlit Monitor

This year, we looked at 23-24-inch LED-blacklit monitors that are priced at S$450 or under. These monitors can handle full HD resolution (1920 x 1080), and above all, are well-suited for a wide variety of usage needs.

Nominees:

• AOC Razor E2343F
• BenQ V2410
• Dell ST2320L
• HP 2310e
• LG E2350V
• Philips 234EL2
• Samsung SyncMaster PX2370
• Viewsonic VX2450wm

And the Winner Is...

The HP2310e is a charming set, showcasing an impressively thin and chic body that scores high in style, stability and build. Usability is high on this sleek screen, aided by both a straightforward GUI and power-saving options.

A particular touch that we found useful is that you can simply swipe to decrease or increase your volume or to cycle through the options on a series of lines that’s placed with the rest of the responsive touch controls. Performance is excellent on this set, with extremely crisp, sharp details with accurate and rich color production. The combination of great design and excellent performance sealed HP's pole position in our testing and usage.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

Best 802.11n Wireless Router

The past year witnessed a boom of 802.11n routers following the wireless standard's final ratification. Demand for N-routers have also spiked due to the need for faster access points (APs) with the implementation of fiber infrastructure. Here is a list of the dual-band nominees which made it to our list.

Nominees:

• ASUS RT-N56U Dual Band N Router
• Belkin Play Max
• Linksys by Cisco E2000
• Netgear WNDR3700 RangeMax Router
• TRENDnet TEW-673GRU Wireless N

And the Winner Is...

Rarely does a tech product combine polished good looks and solid performance, but ASUS has managed to pull it off with the 'true' dual band RT-N56U. Its sleek and stylized form factor departs from conventional router designs, whilst maintaining an array of practical features such as UPnP and print server support, customizable QoS, port triggering, DoS protection and FTP server services. Most of all, it knocked our socks off with its speedy throughputs, and even more so on its 5GHz band. Indeed, ASUS has proven that it is possible to combine stellar good looks and a punchy performance in a single device.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

Best AIO Color Inkjet Printer

A full-featured PC setup isn't complete if you don't have the best printer to complement its capabilities. For printers, what it really boils down to, is not just the final print quality, but the features and speed at which it performs its task. And, you would want something more than a printer - you would want a printer that does wireless printing, scanning and have duplex print support. From our labs, we've shortlisted five such capable AIO color inkjet printers, and the nominees for this year's Tech Awards are:

Nominees

• Brother MFC-J615W
• Canon Pixma MG6170
• Epson ME-960FWD
• HP Photosmart C310a
• Lexmark Pinnacle Pro091

And the Winner is...

Having a good mixture of performance and design has always been Canon's mantra, and that's what we've seen on the Canon PIXMA MG6170. At a reasonable price point with all the right features and performance numbers to back it up, the Canon all-in-one inkjet is the deserving Tech Awards 2011 winner in this category.

 

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

References

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