Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87 Review
Published by Hiwa Pouri on 22.04.14Page:
Conclusion
| Allgemein | + | - | |
| The Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87 is available for as little as 117 Euro and therefore comes with a really attractive price tag. It is basically a cut-down version of the G1.Sniper Z5. Features on this board are USB DAC-UP, upgradable OP-AMPS, audio boost switches, Creative Sound3D as well as gold plated connectors. Since Gigabyte is targeting gamers with the motherboard this is a perfectly suitable features mix and it's being backed-up by a Killer network chip. Apparently the manufacturer gave the G1.Sniper Z87 a design which is less aggressive. Obviously this board is rock-solid and since there is a power design that is built to handle overclocking, you wouldn’t have to worry, if you want to push your system to the limit. | -
Price
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Design
- Features |
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| Layout | + | - | |
| Basically the Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87's Layout has been very well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors. Although this is an aggressively priced board, there are power and reset buttons as well as a debug LED. Something that needs to be mentioned is the fact that this board supports SLI/Crossfire, The second slot is attached using eight lanes, inbetween the first and the second PCI-Express slot, there are two PCI-Express x1 slots. If you decide to setup an SLI or CrossFire configuration, there is plenty of space inbetween the cards to breathe and we still have the first PCIe X1 not covered by any Graphics card witch, A closer look at the I/O panel reveals, there are two video-out ports (HDMI and DisplayPort) and there is no VGA or DVI video out on this board. | -
Angled SATA
connectors
- Space around the CPU socket - Placement of PCI-Express x16 Slots - Display connectors |
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| Performance | + | - | |
| Calcualting the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board ranks in the top of our 3D benchmarks performance index. When taking the average of all 2D results, the board ranks third. Maybe you noticed that especially SuperPi 32m is rather slow, which is an indicator, that loose memory subtimings have been used. Especially with products aiming at mass market this is actually a resonable descision, since it improves memory compatibility. On another note we had a look at power consumption and we noticed something rather interesting. In idle as well as under load conditions this board is reasonably energy efficient. | -
PC Mark Video Playback - SiSoft Sandra Multimedia - Game Benchmarks |
- Super Pi 32M | |
| Overclocking / BIOS | + | - | |
| Meanwhile Gigabyte has a beautiful looking BIOS in its backpack. A closer look reveals there are two different modes. If you load the BIOS you will first see a splash screen. This part of the BIOS is looks really nice and you can access all parameters via the menus. Considering that this part of the BIOS should be desinged with less experienced users in mind, we would like to see a starting screen, which is less overloaded. More is definitely less in this case. As soon as you hit F2 experienced users will feel home, since the good old BIOS becomes visible though which you can race hammering up and down arrows as well as the enter key. | - Sheer amount of
options
- Design |
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| Recommendation | + | - | |
| Should you be looking for a well equipped motherboard for playing games, which is to cost less than 120 Euro, then the Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87 is going to be one of the best offers (if not the best) in that price range. | -
Price
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Gaming - Enthusiast - Overclocking |
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| Rating | |||
| We give the Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87 very good 4.5 out of 5 stars. | |||
Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch
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