[H]ardNews 7th Edition

2003 Technology Awards:

Mad Mike Magee and the staff at the InqWell have come up with part one of the Inquirer Awards for 2003. Unlike other lists, they have a first, second and third place award for each category. The write up covers everything from processors and top technologies to 3D Graphics and mainboards on part two of the article. Go have a look and compare your personal choices with what they have selected.

Runner up goes to AMD's Opteron server processor, which was launched in spring of 2003. This chip appears to offer extremely good performance, particularly when used in clustered systems. AMD has had a number of large design wins which indicate to us that it has every chance of being one of the firm's most succesful microprocessors ever. The jury is still out on its desktop counterpart, the Athlon 64, which will undergo a socket change in 2004.

Ya know, it is the last day of the year and I sure did think we'd see more of these "Top 10" and "Best of 2003" awards by now, but I guess many of them will come in early January as sort of a retrospective or something. One thing is for sure, 2003 has been a "different" year all the way around. A good year...but different.