The G1 Killer series has finally come to Sandy Bridge. We take a look at the new G1.Sniper 2 featuring support for PCI-E 3.0. It’s time to weaponize yourself!
Product on Review: GIGABYTE G1. Sniper 2
Manufacturer and Sponsor: GIGABYTE
Street Price: £350 inc. VAT (At time of review)
Since its debut back in January of this year the G1 series has had plenty of people talking. GIGABYTE’s G1-Killer series is a dedicated range of gaming grade motherboards consisting of the Assassin, Sniper and Guerrilla. So far the series has dealt with the Intel X58 chipset but GIGABYTE have seized the opportunity and has begun a full-scale assault on the Sandy Bridge platform, more notably motherboards that use the Intel Z68 chipset.
The first Intel Z68 motherboard to be released under the G1-Killer moniker is the G1 Sniper 2 just a week ago. The G1 Sniper 2 has an interesting feature-set including early support for PCI-E 3.0, a dedicated Network Processing Unit from networking professionals Bigfoot and other elements to entice gamers. It’s time to lock n’ load, reconnaissance style. Let’s take a look at GIGABYTE’s latest G1 Killer Intel Z68 motherboard.
Featuring several state-of-the-art onboard solutions from industry leaders including Creative and Bigfoot Networks, as well as several unique GIGABYTE features, the G1.Sniper 2 motherboard is unlike any current gaming motherboard on the market. With the ultimate in multi-GPU support, dedicated on-board audio and advanced networking, GIGABYTE has brought out some incredibly big guns to the party, so lock & load soldiers, and get ready to unleash some mass gaming destruction.
Technical Specifications: Click here for full details
Packaging & First Look
The Sniper 2 has a far from ordinary packaging design. The Sniper 2 is from the G1-Killer gaming motherboard series and carries with it the military paraphernalia. It’s good to see something a little bit different than the typically plain – solid colour boxes that usually protect the motherboard.
On the front we have the recognised Intel technology badges showing that our G1 Sniper 2 uses the Intel Z68 chipset and supports Intel’s 2nd generation processors. GIGABYTE are also keen to express that this motherboard uses X-FI audio solutions and Killer E2100 NPU (Network Processing Unit). Spinning the box round – the reverse has a diagram of the G1 Sniper 2 with various significant features specified to give you a rough idea about this motherboard’s feature-set.
The packaging for the G1 Sniper 2
The reverse of the box with details regarding the feature-set
Opening the box up, inside we have a multitude of accessories within the bundle including:
• Documentation – User’s manual, Smart Response Technology Guide, Guidebook
• 4x SATAIII 6Gbps cables
• Fitting screws
• 2-Way SLI bridge
• GIGABYTE case badge
• I/O panel cover
• 5.25” USB3.0 front panel
• 2x G1 Killer posters
• Software CD
The accessories bundle has all the necessary items
GIGABYTE has included a 5.25” USB3.0 device to provide 2x USB3.0 ports, eSATA/USB and a Quick Boost button. This is certainly a step-up from what most brands bundle with the USB3.0 ready motherboards – we have better build quality and a stylish front panel device that will look great installed on any black case.
A nicely designed USB3.0/eSATA/USB device for the front of your case
Finally, we get our first glimpse of the G1 Sniper 2. A striking black PCB against against alternating black and green PCI-E and memory slots set the motherboard off really well. The heatsinks also capture your attention. Around the MOSFETs the heatsink design is oversized and certainly aggressive and the Intel Z68 chip has an impressive looking heatsink . Visually the board is aesthetically pleasing. One or two features that we expect are however absent, there are no onboard power buttons or support for Tri-SLI.
An overview of a deadly looking motherboard
Closer Look
Moving in for a closer look, the around the LGA1155 socket we have a more than sufficient heatpipe/heatsink system. GIGABYTE has actually redesigned their heatpipe for the G1 Sniper 2 and they claim this new design helps to effectively dissipate heat from around this region. The larger of the 3 heatsinks has 6 LED lights fitted, when powered up these LEDs emit a venomous green glow to compliment the colour configuration on the G1 Sniper 2.
The G1 Sniper 2 has 12 Phases (8 specific to the CPU and 4 for memory) and 8-pin power for added stability. This motherboard features GIGABYTE’s notorious Ultra Durable 3 – twice the copper for both the power and ground layers of the PCB, Japanese Solid CAPs, Lower RDS(on) MOSFET and Ferrite Core Chokes. For more information on this please visit: http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/48/tech_080924_ud3.htm
Being LGA1155 we have support for Intel’s 2nd Generation Core i7/i5 and i3 processors. Being a motherboard of such calibre it would be advisable to opt for a K series Intel processor since this motherboard oozes capabilities for overclocking.
An impressive heatsink design with LED lighting
Over on the memory slots we of course have support for dual channel DDR3, with the ability to use 1066MHz all the way up to 2133MHz – including Intel XMP and a maximum capacity of 32GB.
Off towards the left we have the USB3.0 header that will provide up to 2x USB3.0 ports and can be used in combination with the included USB3.0 front panel device.
Memory support – up to 2133MHz, XMP and up to 32GB
Further along we have the SATA ports. There are 4x SATAIII (6Gbps) ports 2 of these provided by Marvell 88SE9172 and the other 2 via the Intel chipset whilst the black ports are SATAII (3Gbps).
SATAIII and SATAII support for HDD storage
Our Intel Z68 chip is cooled via a heatsink carrying the resemblance of firearm ammo. This ‘clip-like’ heatsink has an imitation bullet showing out of one side. As the disclaimer on the bottom of this clip states, this heatsink is exclusively for visual aesthetics.
Intel Z68 cooled via magazine clip styled heatsink
A warning to the big kids out there, this is not a real magazine clip!
Turning out attention to the PCI-E slots the 2 significant slots are highlighting in green. The top slot operating at x16 whilst the 2nd slot at x8. Both of these PCI-E slots support upcoming PCI-E 3.0. If a dual card configuration is used then both cards will operate at x8. Other slots found in this area are 2 x1 slots and 2x PCI slots.
The PCI-E slots here are well spaced out but some may well have expected more PCI-E slots for Tri-SLI or Tri-CrossfireX and rightly so, a gaming motherboard of this calibre should probably offer this feature.
Dual GPU configuration is available on G1 Sniper 2
Seen by the PCI-E slots is the Bigfoot Killer E2100 chip. Providing 1000 Mbit networking capabilities. GIGABYTE have teamed up with Bigfoot to supply a dedicated Network Processing Unit (NPU) – here we have 1GB of DDR2 diverting network traffic away from the CPU. This NPU promises to offer up to 10x faster networking performance for gamers.
Next to the Killer chip we also have a series of Nichicon Audio CAPs that have been given dazzling green and gold colours to correspond with the G1 Sniper 2’s colour configuration.
Bigfoot Killer E2100 – Dedicated Network Processing Unit with 1GB DDR2
Finally, taking a look at the I/O panel on the G1 Sniper 2 there are a variety of ports for gamers to take advantage of, including:
• 7 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1 x CPU overclocking button
• 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 1 x eSATA/USB Combo connector
• 1 x HDMI port (max resolution 1920×1200)
• 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 1 x RJ-45 port
• Audio jack panel via Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Digital Audio Processor (20K2)
The I/O panel with OC button
Test Setup & Overclocking
CPU Intel Core i5 2500K (3.3GHz)
Motherboards
– GIGABYTE G1 Sniper 2
– ASRock Extreme4 Gen3
– MSI Big Bang Marshal
– ASUS Maximus IV Extreme
– GIGABYTE Z68-UD4
– Foxconn Rattler P67
– ASUS Sabertooth P67
– ASUS P8P67 (LGA1155)
– Foxconn P67A-S
– ECS P67H2-A (Black Extreme)
Memory 4GB Kingston HyperX Genesis CL9 1600MHz
CPU Cooler Noctua NH-D14
Graphics ZOTAC GTX 460
PSU OCZ Fatal1ty 750W
All P67 Sandy Bridge motherboards will be benchmarked against each other using the Intel Core i5 2500K. The maximum overclock will also be included within the proceeding benchmark tests to identify performance gains as a result of tweaking CPU clock speed via the multiplier.
G1 Sniper 2 – with LED lighting
Overclocking
As previously mentioned in our Intel Core i5 Sandy Bridge Roundup – overclocking is achieved by altering the multiplier rather than the BCLK. So the BCLK stays at 100MHz and the multiplier is modified. So if we have 100MHz on the BCLK and 40 for the multiplier this will obviously output 4GHz. We chose to use the Intel Core i5 2500K across each of the motherboard tests and indeed for the overclocking due to its unlocked multiplier.
With overclocking simplified on Sandy Bridge, this means that achieving the best overclock couldn’t be easier. CPU voltage and multiplier just need to be modified accordingly. The ultimate milestone is 5GHz on air cooling for the Intel Core i5 2500K, my immediate action was to set the multiplier at 50 and increase voltages to sustain this overclock. I soon began to have problems with this, altering PLL, VTT and increasing the CPU voltage to 1.5v still wasn’t enough to allow for a stable overclock. It did boot but during stress testing using LinX I was soon given a BSOD.
So, from here I began moving the multiplier back whilst keeping reasonably high voltages in place. 4.8GHz (40 x 100) was ultimately the overclock result that was stable. CPU voltage being 1.47v and PLL 1.9v. Note CPU-Z screenshot displayed the voltage incorrectly… as you will appreciate overclocking 4.8GHz would not be possible on 1.044v!
Power Consumption
It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all motherboards. Although they are all using the P67 chipset, energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use and then the system is loaded with 3DMark 11 – watts are again monitored for the duration of the test and the highest rated wattage result is then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.
When it comes to power efficiency the G1 Sniper 2 is placed right in the middle. Whilst it isn’t the most energy efficient the results aren’t terrible.
Synthetic Benchmarks: AIDA64
Get your copy of AIDA64 here!CPU Queen
This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.
CPU Photoworrx
This benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than 2 processing threads used. For example, on a 8-way Pentium III Xeon system the 8 processing threads will be “fighting” over the memory, creating a serious bottleneck that would lead to as low scores as a 2-way or 4-way similar processor based system could achieve. CPU PhotoWorxx test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
CPU AES
This benchmark measures CPU performance using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) data encryption. In cryptography AES is a symmetric-key encryption standard. AES is used in several compression tools today, like 7z, RAR, WinZip, and also in disk encryption solutions like BitLocker, FileVault (Mac OS X), TrueCrypt.
CPU AES test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it’s hardware accelerated on VIA PadLock Security Engine capable VIA C3, VIA C7 and VIA Nano processors; and on Intel AES-NI instruction set extension capable processors. The test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
CPU AES test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it’s hardware accelerated on VIA PadLock Security Engine capable VIA C3, VIA C7 and VIA Nano processors; and on Intel AES-NI instruction set extension capable processors. The test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
FPU Mandel
This benchmark measures the double precision (also known as 64-bit) floating-point performance through the computation of several frames of the popular “Mandelbrot” fractal. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and it is extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate MMX, MMX+/SSE, SSE2, SSSE3, or AVX instruction set extension. FPU Mandel test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
Synthetic Benchmarks: x264 HD
Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.
x264 HD gives results for 2 passes when compressing an MPEG-2 clip into x264. It presents 4 separate results for each pass giving a total of 8 – all results are given in FPS. For each pass I have averaged out the results.
G1 Sniper 2 is consistently strong, staying at the top of the results chart. Certainly for the 1st pass the results are difficult to distinguish between. The 2nd pass reveals a slight advantage for our motherboard under the spotlight today.
Synthetic Benchmarks: Cinebench 11.5
CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.
For our Cinebench CPU score the G1 Sniper 2 is a leader. Overclocking gives the points score a significant boost.
Synthetic Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA 2011
SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.
Processor tests – The G1 Sniper 2 shows impeccable performance during the CPU tests, it’s one of the top contenders in the SANDRA tests.
Memory tests– Whilst the results in this arena of testing are fairly nominal in difference the G1 Sniper 2 still excels – stock results almost the leading motherboard.
Synthetic Benchmarks: 3DMark 11
Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
3DMark 11 was released at the end of last year and needs little introduction. For the test settings both Performance and Extreme presets are run with ‘benchmark only’ being selected. This provides good analysis. Many will only test the performance preset, using the extreme mode we can examine the board under much more severe stressing.
There isn’t much to separate the motherboards in both our performance and extreme 3DMark 11 benchmarks. The G1 Sniper 2 does however lead in this specific set of 3D benchmarks showing that for 3D rendering this motherboard appears to be the best in its class.
Game Benchmarks: DIRT 2, Call of Duty Black Ops, Metro 2033. UT3
It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because many of our motherboards on the test bench have features which market them directly at gamers. So here we have a selection of popular gaming titles, critically acclaimed and action-packed.
Gaming performance across each of the motherboards is fairly marginal, but remarkably G1 Sniper 2 manages to excel in all of the gaming benchmarks.
Conclusion
Since the press release of G1 Sniper 2 emerged some weeks ago there has been plenty of discussing surrounding this motherboard across communities and social networking sites – mostly positive feedback I must say, but it falls with us to deliver the verdict. Is G1 Sniper 2 the perfect weapon?
From a visual aspect GIGABYTE have created an aesthetically pleasing gaming motherboard. It catches the eye, has the coveted black PCB and even LED lighting on the oversized heatsinks near the CPU socket. From the packaging right through to the board itself with magazine heatsink and visible bullet – GIGABYTE have captured the military feel with the G1 Sniper 2.
Performance-wise the G1 Sniper 2 is one of the best motherboards we have looked at so far. In all of the benchmarks it offered solid, consistent results and delivered great 3D performance – outmatching the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme, a board that is deemed as the ‘cream of the crop’ by Sandy Bridge enthusiasts. The G1 Sniper 2 has a good feature-set but I can’t help but feel it should have Quad-SLI and Quad-CrossfireX support – perhaps GIGABYTE are reserving this for the soon to be announced G1 Assassin 2/Guerilla 2 motherboard.
As with all G1-Killer motherboards, the Sniper 2 has GIGABYTE’s well known GIGABYTE’s Touch BIOS – alter the BIOS within windows. Audio is also an area that GIGABYTE are keen to focus on, the Sniper 2 features audio support from Creative X-Fi and Bi-Polarized audio CAPs from high quality Nichicon MUSEES. These high quality CAPs give better sound resolution and reproduction… they also look very cool!
Priced between £320-350 inc. VAT (GBP) the G1 Sniper 2 is an expensive investment. For this price we should expect onboard power switches, and Quad-GPU support. Some of the Sandy Bridge motherboards in this price-range mostly offer this. Do bear in mind though that there are some features that aren’t present with some offerings – such as the premium USB3.0 front panel device and the ability to team graphics processing with Lucid VIRTU.
Bottom line is: GIGABYTE have delivered an astounding Intel Z68 motherboard in the G1 Sniper 2. It performs consistently good and if you like the dazzling looks then this is one to put on the wishlist!
Pros
+ Aesthetically pleasing – looks aggressive
+ Top performing motherboard
+ Overclocks well
+ PCI-E 3.0 Support
+ Dedicated Network Processing Unit (Killer E2100)
+ Onboard HDMI delivers up to 1920×1200 performance
Cons
– No UEFI
– Lack of Quad-SLI/Quad CrossfireX support
+ Aesthetically pleasing – looks aggressive
+ Top performing motherboard
+ Overclocks well
+ PCI-E 3.0 Support
+ Dedicated Network Processing Unit (Killer E2100)
+ Onboard HDMI delivers up to 1920×1200 performance
Cons
– No UEFI
– Lack of Quad-SLI/Quad CrossfireX support
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
