Recommended Award
GIGABYTE G1 SNIPER2
RRP: $359 | Website: http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3962#ov
Test Machine
• Intel Core i7 2600K
• AMD RADEON HD5870
• G.Skill Flare 1600 7-9-7-24
• WD Velociraptor 600GB
• Corsair AX 1200 PSU
• Windows 7 64-Bit
G
igabyte are freshmen in
the gaming motherboard
segment which has long
been dominated by ASUS’s
republic of gamers line, but
the G1 series has quickly
established them as a force.
Starting with th e G1 X58
series motherboards and
22 The OverClocker Issue 17 | 2011
more recently the G1 Z68
series, Gigabyte has made
a big impact with their
military designs and visually
pleasing colour schemes.
The latest board in the G1
series is the G1.Sniper2
Z68 board and it continues
the gaming focus with
support for 2-way graphics
configurations, a Killer NIC
E2100 network controller
and high end creative sound
blaster audio processor.
Analysis
For comparisons sake I
compared the G1.Sniper2
against its direct competitor
the ASUS Maximus 4
Extreme-Z (M4E-Z).
In a promising start we
find the Sniper2 has a small
advantage in the memory
read MB/s benchmark. This
is very surprising as ASUS is
known as the king of memory
bandwidth going way back
to the P35 platform. When
we previously compared
the X58 Sniper against the
ASUS Rampage 3 Extreme
we also found the bandwidth
figures were very close
between the two. Of course
it is no surprise to see the
Sniper2 also taking a small
lead in SuperPI efficiency as