This is the third year that you, the reader, decided what the best PC components and peripherals were. This is also the third year that we rigorously controlled the results to check and verify that every vote, totaling more than 20,000, was legitimate. Like last year, for example, we checked that every single vote had a valid email address. This is as clean as it gets.

And yes, there were surprises: in the two-horse graphics card market between ATI and Nvidia, ATI won first place in every graphics related category.

If that wasn't amazing enough, ATI came in first for the best graphics card manufacturer, stealing the show from Asus after ATI did not even place in the top-three last year.

For most Best Innovation in CPUs, what were the contenders? To say the least, AMD's Athlon64 did not have a whole lot of competition to win this category when it came to CPU innovations. The Pentium4? Via's processor? To note: the Athlon64 does not have many applications either to take advantage of its capabilities game wise.

Indeed, weird times are upon us. While we limited the number of categories to 15 compared to last year's 26, the breadth of component choices and options reflects the state of the PC industry: There are many top gun manufacturers for each category, devices are getting better and prices continue to decline for almost all products except the very cutting edge. Based on your votes and the small numbers between first place and the rest, vendors are also scrambling to distinguish themselves.

The Winners Circle

Drum roles please: