Gigabyte G1 Sniper Intel X58 Gaming motherboard Review
Bluetooth 16 Apr 2011
Motherboard makers have always been looking for ways to explore ways to innovate their motherboards. We have seen Multimedia capable ITX boards to full fledged workstation class boards in the past. One segment that have been left out is the gaming enthusiasts. Although this is a niche group, but they form the highest spending group among the buyers. Periodic upgrades of graphics cards, CPUs, RAMs just to get an upper hand in action gaming as speed is important to them.
A couple of weeks ago, Gigabyte introduced their first series of gaming boards. These gaming boards are quite different from the regular motherboards. They are not only design for performance and reliability, it also has a unique design and enhance audio and network capability.
Based on the proven tri channel memory architecture Intel X58+ICH 10R chipsets, this board supports the Socket 1366 processor. It has 3 full length PCIe 2.0 slots and support either NVIDIA 3 way SLI or AMD 3 way CrossFire X.
For maximum speed, the board uses the gamer’s choice networking platform – Bigfoot Killer E2100 Game Networking Platform. This network has a dedicated 1GB of DDR2 memory directly onboard G1. Sniper for up to 10X faster networking performance; allowing gamer to move faster and shoot quicker. For better sound quality, Gigabyte puts aside the conventional 7.1ch audio and replaced it with Creative’s SoundBlaster X-Fi Digital audio processor (20K2) with X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity and EAX AHD 5.0 technologies. There is also a built in 15 ohm load amplifier for front audio headphone. It also uses high quality Nichicon MUSE ES and MW series Bi Polarised audio capacitors at each channel for high quality sound. On top of that it supports Dolby Digital Live and DTS.
For quick access to files, the board is equippde with 2 USB 3.0 ports for quick connectivity. The backplane also comes with power eSATA ports. There is also a quick boost button allowing gamers to instantaneously overclock their system with the click of a button.
The board can support up to 4 USB 3.0 ports (2 front, 2 back), SATA6 Gbps by Marvell and 3X power boost on all USB ports for power hungry USB devices (for charging).
Below is an unboxing video of the board. On the next few pages, we will take a look at the various aspects of the motherboard.