Best scores are bolded. We used a Core
17-3770,8GB DDR3/1866 set at DDR3/160D. a WD Raptor 150, a GeForce GTX 580, and
64-hit Windows 7 Professional. SATA 6Gh/s speeds were measured with OystalDiskMark
and a Patriot Wildfire SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure using an ASMed a controller.
32GB compliance was checked with four 8GB DDR3 modules and SU was run using two
GeForce GTX 580 cards.
The
G1.Sniper M3 gets you SLI and CrossFireX in a compact package.
Benchmarks
|
|
Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3
|
Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H
|
Asus P8Z77-V
|
|
Price
|
$179
|
$189
|
$189
|
|
|
P6.015
|
P6.052
|
P6.308
|
|
|
5,542
|
5,570
|
5,856
|
|
|
3,644
|
3,549
|
3,739
|
|
Valve Particle (fps)
|
204
|
203
|
208
|
|
SISoft Sandra 2012 (GB/s)
|
19
|
21
|
21.3
|
|
SATA 6Gb/s Read / Write (MB/s
|
499 / 223
|
497.9 / 230.4
|
509.9 / 247.1
|
|
|
252/184
|
250.2/ 177.5
|
429.9/181.9
|
|
SLI Compliance
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
32GB Compliance
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
Auto Overclock
|
4.6 GHz
|
4.5 GHz
|
4.2 GHz
|
Gigabyte's g1.killer series of motherboards
have always been love-it-or-leave-it affairs. While some laud the gun shaped heat
sinks of the series, others think them garish or just plain tacky.
With the G1.Sniper M3, Gigabyte does away
with the gun-sinks (though you still get a sheet of stickers riddled with faux
bullet holes). More importantly, the board isn’t some budget microATX jobbie
designed to get the price under or near $100. It’s based on Intel's performance
Z77 chipset and features Lucid Logix’ Virtu as well as CrossFireX and SLI
support out of the box.
The highlight of the board is the Creative
Core3D sound chip using a CA0132. That’s the same part used in Creative’s new
line of USB and PCIe audio devices. The most notable feature of the Core 3D is
probably its "scout mode," which reduces some sound effects (like
explosions) and amplifies footsteps so you can better discern someone
approaching you in a game. If you think that’s cheating, then Steve Austin was
cheating with his bionic hearing, too. There’s also more to the audio: The
audio circuits feature a low-profile metallic RF shield, and an additional
preamp is integrated to help gamers who run headsets from the front-panel
connector. The result is very clean sound and a possible advantage in gaming.
Space is at a premium on microATX boards,
so many features are kicked overboard. The most notable is the lack of a Killer
NIC controller, a prominent feature of the original Killer motherboards. An
Intel network card is included instead. Also gone are surface-mounted power
switches, and secondary USB 3.0 and SATA controllers. As we said, SLI and
CrossFireX are there, but like all performance microATX boards we’ve tested,
the second card sits over the USB, audio, and front-panel connectors. That will
make it a very tight squeeze if you run dual cards. Since a multicard config
would leave the second card also hanging over the edge of the board, you'll
want a case that’s designed for it.
In performance, the G1.Sniper M3 performs
on par with the Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H from our Z77 roundup in August but the Asus
P8Z77-V board from that same roundup slightly leads in performance, especially
in USB 3.0 mode with Asus's Turbo Mode activated. The G1.Sniper M3
auto-overclocked the furthest, though. The board’s auto-tune successfully took
the CPU to a stable 4.6GHz overclock, which is higher than what we saw from all
previousZ77 boards. We did hit a snag trying to get the board back to stock
speeds, however—the utility would not revert the speedsto stock no matter what
we did. We had to finally load the defaults in the BIOS to get it back to its
original state.
Overall, it’s a good board for someone
looking to work within the constrained spaces of microATX. Yes, we really
wanted more USB and SATA ports, but frankly, when you've made the decision to
go microATX, you've already made a compromise, so just suck it up.
