I can see why!

'give-us-hardware-and-we-give-you-award'

i bet the vendor can decide wich award he wants to recive for the test :D

Why didn't they call the website AwardHeaven instead of HardwareHeaven :p

Hahaha!

http://twitter.com/#!/CorsairMemory/...35016673075200

I bet what you want that they do brag about these awards and they do put them in their catalogues and marketing material. I do not understand how this comes as a surprise to you. Awards are a very, very ugly marketing tool which most manufacturers are desperate about, that is why we never gave awards and we never will :)

I have no issue with an award if it's well argumented Tudor... but this particular site is the perfect example of how it should not be done... but the marketing guys don't give damn... high score and an award is what makes them tick !!

Sadly not new... and sadly not the only site doing it....

I hate reward like that... I love badges that fit on a specific rule...

OK now look me in the eye and tell me you've never glossed any aspect of a review :D

This is why I refuse to give scores out in reviews, and I haven't given an award out this year. Awards should be for the premium product which is perfect in every aspect, AND beat all their competitors in every aspect as well - price, performance, warranty, extras, support, comparison to other products.

In my eyes, 5/10 should be average, where 7/10 is an awesome score, and very rarely should anything get above 7. The problem is that people tend to give scores in the 5-10 range - so a really crap product STILL gets 5/10. What does the manufacturer have to do to get worse? Take a massive dump on it?

It all comes back to Kane and Lynch on Gamespot. K&L publishers spend $million on Gamespot advertising - their reviewer gives it 6/10 and gets fired because the advertising was pulled. In reality, 6/10 should be a great game.

For most reviews now, I just look at the score out of 10 and then subtract five, then that's the score out of five.

I don't think 7/10 is that awesome. Average is 5, slightly above average is 6, and above average is 7. Good is 8, very good 9, and awesome (=flawless, or at least close to it): 10. Ditto below 5.

Another point.... should a product get a worse score because other products are better? I can't think of many boards that deserve less than 4... maybe the 6/7-series nvidia chipset boards, but not many others. A board must have some fairly severe issues if it's not worth 4/10 or more. Today I feel most mobos are at least average, so it's not so strange that we don't see really bad scores, although there aren't as many 9's and 10's as the reviews tell us :p I think we set the bar too high if we want mobos to have some really good features just to get a 6 or 7. A 5/10 board should do what it's supposed to do, and nothing more as I see it... add some overclocking functionality and on board power button/couple of similar features and you have a 6. The way I see it...