The bit-tech Hardware Awards 2007

Most Innovative Company: Asustek

While Intel wins the prize for the most innovative single product, it would be rude not to recognise Asus for its products that have this year continually pushed boundaries out.

Asustek isn't just about the motherboards, it also makes graphics products for both Nvidia and AMD, a vast range of notebooks, LCD monitors and TVs, sound cards, barebone PCs, wireless products, webcams, cooling products, storage, mobile products - the list goes on and on.

Even if the company doesn't get everything right, the engineers behind the products actively sit and listen to the criticisms in reviews and the feedback from customers in popular communities like our own. They take this feedback on-board and implement it into the next product where it sees fit or, at the very least the company will sit down and explain its point of view.

Out of the many categories it produces products for, here's a selection of the innovations that Asus has made this year:

• The Asus Eee PC – Since its release, the Eee PC has been a worldwide phenomenon as it's the first notebook to break the mould of expensive notebooks. It's an exceedingly inexpensive, but very capable and portable notebook and it has sold out everywhere.
  
  
• The Asus EPU – For creating a combined power management and auto-overclocking product that actually works so well, we’d consider using it ourselves.
  
  
• The Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus – It was the only Nvidia SLI motherboard that strung together the cheaper nForce 650i SLI north bridge with the more capable nForce 680i SLI south bridge.
  
  
• The Asus Republic of Gamers range - Since its launch 18 months ago, it has gone from strength to strength this year, offering innovative designs that have consistently had been a step ahead of what other manufacturers have come up with.

• The Asus Blitz – It was the only P35 board to split the single x16 graphics slot into to two balanced x8 slots that enabled better CrossFire support under the CrossLinx branding. Additionally, it was also the first motherboard to offer a watercooled north bridge as standard and not as a niche extra.
  
  
• The Asus Maximus Extreme – It used the same CrossLinx splitter chip as the Blitz, but using it to make an X38 motherboard with three PCI-Express x16 slots, thus enabling CrossFireX support on Intel platforms providing that drivers from AMD are forthcoming.
  
  
• The Asus P5K3 Premium – It has 2GB of memory soldered directly to the motherboard. While the actual board failed because of the incredible cost and limited overclocking of the included DDR3 (along with other limitations), the fact Asus tried to do something no one else has is worth noting.
  
  
• The Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe – It has some crazy heatpiped memory coolers added which meant it was yet another first of its kind, even though we are dubious about how useful they will be.
  
  
• The Asus Xonar – For finally challenging Creative in the sound card marketplace. While it featured little more than the CMedia HD Oxygen chipset we reviewed a year earlier, it finally gave some competition to the sound card market and offered a decent package to accompany it. Just recently Asus has also released a PCI-Express x1 version to further spice things up as well.
  
  
• The Asus ExpressGate software - Joining forces with DeviceVM's SplashTop software, Asus included the ultra fast booting Linux distro onto a USB drive hardwired to the board. This gave users the choice to quickly boot into the OS and make a call on Skype or check the Internet using Firefox. While only currently available on a single board, the Asus P5E3 Deluxe WiFi AP @n, the potential for expanding this is massive: imagine a Home Theatre PC that boots in five seconds and has an OS that's simple to navigate and costs you nothing.
  
  
• Draft-n wireless - not content being the only company to offer the extremely useful 802.11g WiFi module on its boards for the last few years, Asus has also gone one better and included draft-n WiFi module on the Asus P5E3 Deluxe WiFi AP @n as well. While there's no doubt that this is a niche product, it shows an initiative to lead and a willing to offer some future-proofing for customers.

Being a bigger company than most will always mean Asus has more money to spend on R&D, but we don’t see this type of thing in nearly as much weight from of its competitors. It’s great that Asus continues to look into new areas and I hope it continues to do what it’s good at, and push the boundaries in 2008, like it has done in 2007.

Final Thoughts...

We hope you've enjoyed this look back at 2007. It's been a pretty good year for technology, with some big advances being made in most areas. We're slowing down a little (but not completely!) for the Christmas break, but you can still expect to see fresh content and our biggest competition ever over the next couple of weeks. We'll be returning in the new year to cover everything you would expect us to cover and more.

Thanks for your support over the past twelve months - we wish all of our readers a fantastic Christmas and a prosperous New Year!