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Gigabyte G1.Sniper 2 Z68 Motherboard Review

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Eldonko

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Overclocking Results

Overclocking Results

As we typically do for reviews, we put the G1.Sniper 2 through countless hours of overclocking and testing; from auto overclocking with the click of a button to manual overclocking where tweaking is king. We omitted sub-zero testing in this case since this board is really targeted towards gamers rather than benchers.

The OC button on the Sniper 2’s rear panel was a pleasure to work with. There was no rebooting and no BIOS changes needed to achieve a reasonable overclock. This button works on the fly, which means you press it and instantly enjoy a 700Mhz overclock on some processor. Gamers will like this because they can keep their system at stock for web browsing and non-intensive tasks and boost to 4200Mhz (on a 2600K) instantly while gaming.

The system was rock stable while using the OC button and we were able to run stress tests without any issue. It would have been nice to see a modest memory overclock like we have seen with ASUS boards but Gigabyte likely did not include this for simplicity’s sake.

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For manual overclocking we know our chip is capable of 5Ghz since we have achieved this milestone on a number of boards so we went right for that speed. We started with a CPU overclock without touching the memory and went right for 50x multi and 100.0 BCLK. From experience, we knew that this 2600k needs 1.42-1.45v (load) to maintain 5Ghz so we set LLC to level 7 and tried 1.42v. We know LLV level 7 is ideal from experience with other Gigabyte boards as more than that gives a fairly large overvolt. 1.42V was not quite enough for LinX so we gradually increased vCore to the point of stability which was 1.455v BIOS and 1.464v load. This was a little more voltage than we have seen with some other boards but not by much.

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Click to enlarge

The next step was to maximize the memory overclock to go along with the 5Ghz on the CPU. Our G.Skill memory is rated for 1067 @ 9-9-9 so that was a natural first step. With 1:8 (21.33) mem frequency, we were unable to get our memory stable at the stock voltage of 1.65v. We tried different slots, more vDIMM, more VCCIO, looser timings, and a single stick but stability was not possible with a 1:8 divider. All other memory frequencies worked great and we settled on the 1:7 frequency and 936Mhz on the memory at 9-9-9.

We felt like we were left unsatisfied with the results of the Trident so we got our hands on a kit of F3-17000CL9D-4GBXL Ripjaws and set the 21.33 mem freq. The Sniper 2 booted into Windows for the first time with 1:8 and voila, it was totally stable. That said we can chalk the issues with the Trident and 21.33 up to incompatibility. It is a few years old now and no longer available so it is not surprising but nonetheless concerning since it worked without an issue on every other board. Make sure to take note of this problem if you are planning on using older memory modules with the Sniper 2.
 
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Eldonko

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System Benchmarks

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SuperPI Benchmark

SuperPi calculates the number of digits of PI in a pure 2D benchmark. For the purposes of this review, calculation to 32 million places will be used. RAM speed, RAM timings, CPU speed, L2 cache, and Operating System tweaks all effect the speed of the calculation, and this has been one of the most popular benchmarks among enthusiasts for several years.

SuperPi was originally written by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 and was updated later by snq to support millisecond timing, cheat protection and checksum. The version used in these benchmarks, 1.5 is the official version supported by hwbot.


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Results: A 14% increase in SuperPI 32M is noted going from stock speed of 3501Mhz (Turbo is on by default) to the auto OC speed of 4213Mhz on the i7 2600k and G1.Sniper 2. Jumping up to the manual overclock speed of 5015Mhz a 30% gain is noted. A 30% boost in PI time is a very nice gain and well worth the effort to overclock.


CINEBENCH R11.5

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation.

In this system benchmark section we will use the x64 Main Processor Performance (CPU) test scenario. The Main Processor Performance (CPU) test scenario uses all of the system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral "No Keyframes" animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The 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.


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Results: The CINEBENCH R11.5 results also show an impressive increase in performance in rendering moving from a stock system to two levels of an overclocked system. For CPU rendering, a 19% to 43% improvement (in points) is noted when moving to auto OC and manual OC speeds!


Sandra Processor Arithmetic and Processor Multi-Media Benchmarks

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. The software suite provides most of the information (including undocumented) users like to know about hardware, software, and other devices whether hardware or software. The name “Sandra” is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means "defender", "helper of mankind".

The software version used for these tests is SiSoftware Sandra Professional Home XII.SP2c and the two benchmarks used are the Processor Multi-Media and Processor Arithmetic benchmarks. These three benchmarks were chosen as they provide a good indication of three varying types of system performance. The multi-media test shows how the processor handles multi-media instructions and data and the arithmetic test shows how the processor handles arithmetic and floating point instructions. These two tests illustrate two important areas of a computer’s speed and provide a wide scope of results.


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Results: Sandra processor arithmetic and multi-media show very impressive improvements on an overclocked system, with 43% gains in performance across the board in arithmetic and multi-media for the manual overclock and 20% gains for the auto OC.


MaxxMem Benchmark

Created by MaxxPI², the MaxxMem benchmark tests your computer’s raw memory performance, combining copy, read, write and latency tests into one global score. This memory benchmark is a classic way to measure bandwidth of a memory subsystem.

MaxxMem uses continuous memoryblocks, sized in power of 2 from 16MB up to 512MB, starting either writing to or reading from it. To enable high-precision memory performance measurement, they both internally work with multiple passes and averages calculations per run.

Further, the main goal was to minimize (CPU) cache pollution on memory reads and to eliminate it (almost completely) on memory writes. Additionally, MaxxMem operates with an aggressive data prefetching algorithm. This all will deliver an excellent judge of bandwidth while reading and writing.


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Results: Moving from stock speed to the auto OC on the Sniper 2, we see modest gains of 3-16% in memory read, write, and copy. When we move memory speed up to 936Mhz (1T) and CPU speed to 5015Mhz we see more substantial gains (up to 44%) in memory read, write, and copy!

The results are similar when looking at latency, only a 4% gain is noted at auto OC settings but when a manual overclock is implemented along with a memory overclock the gains jump up to 31%. These findings show that CPU power can do a bit for memory latency and bandwidth but optimizing your memory will help a lot more.
 
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Eldonko

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SLI and Virtu Testing

SLI Testing



The objective in this section is to see how much we gain by adding a second GPU to the system. For SLI testing, two GTX 470s were used, both running at stock speeds of 607/1215/3348 for the PNY and 625/1250/3348 for the Galaxy. All tests were completed using Nvidia ForceWare 280.26 drivers and Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. In the following tests, all SLI comparisons were run at manual overclock settings (5015Mhz/936Mhz 9-9-9 1T).

We did have a bit of a challenge getting SLI working at first but after switching the cards around a few times both cards were recognized. It could be because of different brands on the GTX 470 or the board could be picky for card seating but we thought we should mention it either way.


3DMark 11 Benchmark:

3DMark 11 is the most recent release by Futuremark, creators of the 3DMark suite. 3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark for measuring the graphics performance of gaming PCs. Designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

For our testing, we will use the Performance setting with all other settings at default. The build version is the latest Advanced version of 3DMark 11, v1.02.


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Results: For a pure graphics benchmark like 3DMark11, the G1.Sniper 2 is no slouch when running SLI and shows a gain in 3DMarks (performance preset) of 3,850 or an improvement of 79%.


3DMark Vantage Benchmark:

3DMark Vantage is a recent release by Futuremark, creators of the 3DMark suite. This program was the first Futuremark version of 3DMark designed exclusively for Windows Vista. 3DMark Vantage consists of 2 CPU and 2 GPU tests as well as and 6 feature tests all of which are very hardware intensive. Four presets are available to allow for those with older PCs to benchmark just as easily as those with cutting edge hardware. For our testing, we will use the Performance setting with all other settings at default. The build version is the latest patched version of Vantage v1.1.0.

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Results: Vantage gains are a little less than we saw with 3DMark 11 for the G1.Sniper 2 with a gain of 69% when a second GTX 470 is added.


Street Fighter IV Benchmark:

This benchmark tool from Capcom was originally released for users to test the capabilities of their PC for the release of Street Fighter 4. The benchmark contains several bouts, filled with hadoukens and kicks to the face and provides users with a score and average frames per second. For our tests we are more concerned with FPS as this is a good indication of how SLI will run in a gaming situation. Settings used were C16xQAA and a resolution of 1920x1080.

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Results: Similar to Vantage, gains in SF IV are a little less than the other tests with improvements of 69% when adding a second GTX 470.


World in Conflict Benchmark:

The World in Conflict in-game benchmark is a great test to show video card performance in real gaming situations. Under the Graphics menu in options, you can choose a variety of video settings and there is a "Run Benchmark" button. The actual benchmark uses all of the game’s graphic capabilities and is a good indication which settings will be optimal for a user’s system. For the tests below resolution was set to 1920x1080 and graphics was set to “Very High” which gives fullscreen anti-alias at 4x and anisotropic filtering at 4x.

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Results: In a gaming benchmark that simulates gaming situations, the performance gained when running SLI vs. a single card is on par with the 3DMark 11 improvement. When adding a second GTX 470, average FPS improves by 54 FPS or 79%.


Far Cry 2 Benchmark:

Far Cry 2 is the popular first-person shooter from Ubisoft's Montreal studio, and the first game to utilize the new visually stunning Dunia Engine. The Benchmarking is excellent and does a great job in giving an accurate measurement of gaming situations. We ran the Long Ranch demo in DX10 mode at 1920x1080 with all settings set to very high and anti-aliasing set to 4x.

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Results: The Far Cry 2 DX10 Benchmark is very graphics dependant and shows how the G1.Sniper 2 gets the best out of a second video card. FPS sees a nice gain from a second GTX 470 with an improvement in average FPS of 82%!


Resident Evil 5 Benchmark:

The Resident Evil 5 benchmark was originally developed to test out the performance of Resident Evil 5 using the Nvidia's 3D Vision stereoscopic technology, however its use goes further than that.

Developed by Capcom, the RE5 benchmark is based on the MT Framework Engine, similar to Devil May Cry 4. RE5 uses MT Framework (2.0) which offers multi-core optimizations, modern rendering technology from HDR, hemisphere lighting, soft shadows and particles, and motion blur, and several other advanced technologies.

For testing, we used the DX10 version of the benchmark, 1920x1080 resolution, and AA set to 4x. We also selected the variable benchmark which measures performance over a variety of different gaming situations.


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Results: Similar to the Far Cry 2 benchmark, the DX10 RE5 benchmark is very graphics dependant and illustrates how well the G1.Sniper 2 can perform with SLI. We see a gain of 107 FPS or 82%!


Virtu Testing


Virtu allows users to dynamically switch between the onboard iGPU and the 3D discrete graphics card. Switchable graphics can help save on power since the discrete GPU powers down for non-intensive 3D applications.

We installed the iGPU drivers from Intel as well as the Virtu drivers with no issues, enabled Virtu and got down to testing. The tests with Virtu enabled were very close, if not identical in all cases to the two GPUs being used separately. As a result we did not bother graphing the results but here they are in table format. The same settings that were used for SLI testing were used for Virtu.

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As you can see Virtu really does not have an effect on performance so there is little reason not to use it to save a little power. However, take note that due to the limits of this board's output connector, Vitru CANNOT be used for resolutions higher than 1920 x 1080.
 
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Eldonko

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Creative X-Fi / Bigfoot E2100 Testing

Creative X-Fi Testing


While we typically avoid audio testing in motherboard reviews due to its highly subjective nature (and the prevalence of Realtek’s ALC889), this one is going to be a bit different. Why? Well, because Gigabyte went through the trouble of including a full-fledged Creative sound card on their board.

Subjectively speaking, we think that Sniper 2 produces absolutely spectacular sound when paired up with the right headphones but to give a more objective take we used RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) 6.2.3 for testing. We tested the Sniper 2 Creative X-Fi audio against a typical audio chip: Realtek ALC889 on EVGA’s P67 FTW. The results of the testing are as follows:

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As you can see the Creative X-Fi outperforms the Realtek chip in all tests and gets excellent ratings in 6 of 8 tests. Just remember that this solution isn’t something you’ll want to pair up with inexpensive speakers or headphones. To get the best out of your source material, every part of the audio steam needs to be in tip top shape so while the X-Fi may work wonders in these tests, it would be totally pointless if used with a cheap output device.

Details of each test are as follows:



Bigfoot E2100 Testing

In addition to Creative X-Fi audio, the G1.Sniper 2 comes with Bigfoot Networks Killer E2100 gaming NIC. This NIC is about $90 on its own and as a result is a decent portion of the Sniper 2’s overall price tag.

The benefits of a gaming NIC have been widely debated but with a dedicated network processor and features such as Advanced Game Detect, Windows network bypass, and Visual Bandwidth Control, there are definitely some noteworthy additions here. In its most basic use, this BIC allows for extra control over your network and settings can be implemented so other network traffic will not affect an online gaming experience. These features alone provide a big advantage over the LAN connections present on typical boards.

Throughout the course of testing the Killer NIC we have come to realize there aren’t a whole lot of ways to show its actual performance advantages. Many of the benefits it brings to the table can be felt in-game rather than translate into pretty graphs. With that being said, online gaming in some applications was noticeably improved and inputs were converted into onscreen movements very quickly.

For synthetic comparison purposes, we put the Marvell Yukon 88E8057 up against the E2100 and ran some tests to see the differences:

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In the AIDA32 Network Benchmark the E2100 gives a higher average bandwidth and less of a variation between maximum and minimum numbers.

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While not exactly shattering the competition, the Killer NIC came out on top for both of these tests as well. It should be noted that the SpeedTest bandwidth benchmark was a statistical tie but the all-important ping was noticeably lower when using the E2100.

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The last test we ran was Call of Duty Black Ops multiplayer through Steam. In game ping was used for a measurement and a recording was taken every 10 seconds for 3 minute periods. Then we took the average of the ping to see the difference between the Killer NIC and the Marvell Yukon 88E8057.

As you can see above, the Killer NIC came out on top in this test as well but we highly doubt an 8ms difference will be noticed by most gamers.
 
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Eldonko

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SSD Caching Performance

SSD Caching Performance

When Z68 first dropped we did a rundown of its features which included SSD caching testing. Since that was a few months ago and we have a different SSD for the Sniper 2 we reran several of the tests.

In order to test RST Caching, we paired up a 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 with a 1TB WD Black 6Gb/s drive and ran tests with no caching, and then with Maximum and Enhanced modes enabled.

Synthetic Benchmark Performance

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Before going too deep into the results the difference between Maximized and Enhanced modes needs to be discussed. Enhanced mode, uses the cache is a mirror so data will be retained when there are system issues. In Maximized mode, the data is written to the SSD first and then synced to the hard disk later so if the primary drive experiences data loss, there won’t be any backup.

Performance wise, Enhanced mode improves read speeds but writes continue to be bottlenecked by the write performance of the primary hard drive while Maximized mode accelerates both reads and writes.

PCMark shows that Maximized really is the best in terms of overall performance while Crystal DiskMark shows that Enhanced mode really is tied at the hip to the HDD.

If you are wondering why the write numbers are a bit low for caching, it is because we are using a “dirty” Vertex 2 which is slightly degraded. This is also a non-compression benchmark so the SSD seems a bit slower than it may be in reality.


Real World Performance

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Applying what we learned above to a few real world situations we see consistent results. Windows 7 and Resident Evil 5 load similarly with SSD caching but when you remove the caching load times increase.

To decide whether Enhanced or Maximized modes is best for you, take into consideration what type of data you are caching and if you are willing to risk losing it. We should note however that even with Maximized mode the risk of losing anything is very very slim, about the same risk as if you keep important data on a SSD. Backing up your crucial data is a good idea in any case.
 
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Eldonko

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Conclusion

Conclusion

As we saw with the X58 Killer-series boards, Gigabyte has been pushing themselves on the innovation and marketing fronts albeit with varying degrees of success. Pushing a “gamer” motherboard tends blur the line between self styled gamers and power users but the Sniper 2’s features reflect its target audience quite well. There are however a few things that may not sit all that well with anyone.

Similar to the ASUS Sabertooth boards, the cooling system design and overall aesthetics of the Sniper 2 present us with a love it or hate it situation. The green and black colour scheme is undeniably good looking but many will look at the ammo clip cooling system as a lame marketing idea that has been taken way too far.

Regardless of its oddball looks the Sniper 2 does have one major advantage over some of the competition’s best motherboards: support for upcoming PCI-E 3.0 graphics cards and Ivy Bridge CPUs. Naturally, the inclusion of the Killer NIC and onboard X Fi sound card also differentiate it from everything else that’s currently available and both of these additions actually work quite well. The flawless integration of these two gamer-oriented features also allows users to avoid the complicated installation process that usually involved when installing stand alone add in cards. In addition, on some boards stand alone soundcards and NICs pull bandwidth from the GPU’s PCI-E lanes but the Sniper 2 avoids this pitfall altogether.

There really weren’t any glaring faults in terms of build quality but some component sacrifices were made so the Sniper 2 hit a reasonable price point. When buying a $360 motherboard we’re used to a massive PWM that supports high end overclocking, onboard Power / Reset and Clear CMOS buttons, 3 way SLI and a tweaker friendly BIOS. Luckily this board retains a very good yet classic BIOS setup and yet it ditches the other items in the name of cost savings. From our perspective, the Sniper 2 is basically a $170 board with $190 worth of extras tacked onto its PCB.

Gigabyte has really made it easy for an inexperienced overclocker (or should that be “gamer”? -Ed.) to get the most out of their CPU. The Sniper 2’s OC button gave our 2600K an instant 700Mhz overclock without even rebooting the system and we think that gamers will enjoy having this ability at their fingertips. More advanced users can of course go for some higher speeds and we achieved 5Ghz with minimal effort. Memory compatibility was however a point of frustration since our kit just couldn’t hit its default speeds. This was surprising considering it has worked flawlessly on every other board we’ve reviewed but a switch to newer Ripjaws X modules cleared things up.

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Gigabyte has discovered a niche for the Sniper 2 but the appeal will nonetheless be limited as evidenced by its limited edition status. While the PC gaming market is huge most gamers want an inexpensive motherboard that includes has a few tweaking options but ultimately allows them afford a high end graphics card. They may buy a dedicated NIC or sound card sometime down the road but as an initial investment, other components have a much greater impact upon in game performance. Nonetheless, we feel the Sniper 2 is an excellent fit for gamers that want excellent network and audio performance but don’t want the hassle of add-in cards. It is a unique platform that has everything one could possibly want and serves as an all inclusive starting point for any gaming system.


Pros

- Built in NIC and soundcard saves space and avoids compatibility issues
- Exceptional sound quality from Creative X-Fi
- Excellent layout, no clearance issues
- OC button works great and is perfect for gamers
- Ivy Bridge and PCI-E 3.0 support
- Solid BIOS, relatively bug free for a brand new board
- Software suite is huge
- SSD caching and Virtu are nice additions


Cons

- $360 puts the Sniper 2 among the most expensive 1155 boards
- No UEFI BIOS interface and Touch BIOS doesn’t seem useful
- CMOS jumper could be more accessible



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