In the TG Lab: GIGABYTE’s G1.Sniper Motherboard

I posted a look at Intel’s DX58SO2 motherboard yesterday in another instalment of ‘In the TG Lab’, and today, I continue with a look at another X58-based offering: GIGABYTE’s G1.Sniper. Unlike Intel’s board, which looks to deliver a good balance between stability and features, GIGABYTE’s G1.Sniper pushes as much as possible to the limit, and the result is one freakin’ packed board.

This is so much the case, that along with its neat design and rich feature-set, we awarded the G1. series one of our ‘Best of CES 2011’ awards earlier this year. But what exactly does the G1. offer that’s so special? It’s simple: a great NIC, and great audio. No, we’re not talking ordinary on-board parts here, but true chipsets that deliver the goods a gamer is looking for.

On the NIC side, there’s an integrated Killer E2100. Tweaked for online gaming, this NIC promises to deliver the best latencies possible during online gameplay, thanks in part to the included software that prioritizes gameplay. And while the E2100 is an on-board offering, it acts as a discrete card in that it won’t hog any CPU cycles or system RAM to get its job done.

The other half of the equation is with the on-board Creative X-Fi audio chipset, delivering all of the perks that X-Fi and EAX can avail. Unlike most motherboard solutions which implement a scaled-back software variant of X-Fi, the G1. Sniper and Assassin both offer a real discrete offering… right on the motherboard itself. So for those who want to dedicate all their PCI Express slots with GPUs, you won’t have to worry about your audio.

There are many more features that this board brings to the table, but I’ll save most of that for the actual review. If there’s one thing I can say about the board so far though, it’s that it’s about as packed as it can get, and is designed for the truest of gamers. This isn’t an overclocking motherboard, and in fact GIGABYTE asked us to not focus on that much at all, because it’s not the board’s intent. Instead, the G1 is designed for gamers who want a motherboard made for them, and so far, it seems to make the mark.

If you look around the board, you can see a faux gun cartridge at the bottom right-hand corner, and heatsinks that are made to look like gun barrels. The green/black color scheme does well to tie everything together, and it looks quite sharp overall.

I’ll be taking both the Intel DX58SO2 and GIGABYTE’s G1.Sniper for some in-depth testing over the next week, so you can expect our review of both soon.