Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 (Z77) Motherboard Review

Every manufacturer has their specialist range of products, which are generally kept in the higher-end of the market. Fiat have Ferrari, Volkswagen have Bugatti. The computer world is very much the same, as Asus have their ROG lineup, ASRock have their Extreme series, and Gigabyte have the G1 series. The G1 series of boards originated with the X58 chipset when a range of boards were released to offer up sheer performance that gamers would appreciate and be able to harness, to give them the very best results within games. The success of these boards spilled over into Z68 with the G1.Sniper 2 being a massive hit for Gigabyte and taking the Z68 market by storm. Keeping with the logic of basing new products upon the range, we find the G1 being brought to X79 with the Assassin 2 being top of the hit list. For those who can't quite afford a socket 2011 based system however, it meant Z68 was the only affordable option, until the new Z77 chipset arrived, and Gigabyte graced it with the G1 treatment. Today sees us taking a look at a G1 board, in the shape of the G1.Sniper M3. A Micro-ATX board that is said to pack a serious punch in terms of features and performance, without skimping out, just because it's a little bit short compared to other boards on the market. As we never had a chance to look at this board before, like we did with the other boards in preview format, we can start from the very top. As usual, we will take a look at the packaging and bundle that's on offer, before taking a look around the board and checking out its design and feature list. Once the design and feature aspect is out of the way, we can start to look at the key performance that this board has to offer at both stock and overclocked, by seeing how far things can be pushed with this new board from Gigabyte. I'm a big fan of the G1 series boards, so this is a very special time for me, as I'm keen to see if this can carry on the legacy from the X58, Z68 and X79 boards that have already been a huge success. The box for the G1.Sniper M3 is of typical size for a Micro-ATX board and includes an army style design on the front. Some of the main, key features are listed down and the famous G1 Killer logo sits down the bottom right. Turning things around, we can see that the rear of the box gives a first glimpse to the styling of the board and the main features are pointed out with "super" branding. The full specifications and key 3D features are also explained in further detail. Opening the box up reveals a nice bundle including a multilingual installation guidebook, user manual, set of G1 Killer stickers, G1 Killer poster, case badge sticker and driver utility disc. Also included is a rear I/O panel shield plate, two blue and two black SATA data cables, of which one of each is right-angled and a single SLI bridge. Taking a first look at the board, the first thing you will notice is that it has a Micro-ATX form factor and has the green/black colour scheme that we've seen on previous G1 series motherboards across the range. Though we are looking at a Micro-ATX board, it doesn't look as though anything has been skimped on. Taking a look at the cooling that is present on the board we can see a single black passive heatsink around the CPU socket with a single 4-pin CPU power connector behind it. No other cooling is present around the socket leaving us wondering if this board is any good at overclocking. The only other cooling that is on the board is down in the opposite corner, giving sufficient passive cooling to the Intel Z77 chipset. This is a low-profile heatsink allowing long graphics cards to be used and not to be obstructed in any way. Memory wise, we see four DIMM slots in a typical dual-channel configuration. Two slots are black, while the other two are green to stick with the design and style on the rest of the board. The board supports up to 32GB of DDR3 of speeds up to DDR3 2400 (OC). Also in the usual place, you'll find the 24-pin ATX power connector, a system fan header and native USB 3.0 header. Moving down the board, we can see that even though a Micro-ATX form factor is used, the expansion slots didn't suffer. We find a single black PCI-Express x1 slot in the middle, surrounded by three PCI-Express x16 slots, of which the first operates at x16 speeds, the second at x4 speeds and the third at x8 speeds. By using the first and third slots (x16 and x8) you can take advantage of AMD CrossFireX and Nvidia SLI technology. Moving slightly further down, we can take a look at the various connectors including front panel audio, TPM, three USB 2.0 ports and the main front panel connectors. Also close by that's worth mentioning is the audio functionality. The audio area is surrounded by an EMI shield which splits the high-quality Creative CA0132 SoundCore3D chip away from any interference. Taking a look at the storage on this board, we find a total of five SATA ports, of which two are white and support SATA 6Gb/s devices through the Z77 chipset. There is also a further three SATA ports (black) which support SATA 3Gb/s devices through the Intel Z77 chipset controller. All SATA ports also support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. Finishing with the rear I/O panel, we find a total of four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, a PS/2 combo port, VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. An eSATA 3Gb/s connector is also on the rear as well as an Intel Gigabit provided LAN port, SPDIF and 5.1 channel sound through the Creative CA0132 chip and supports Sound Blaster Recon3Di. The BIOS from Gigabyte comes in two parts, the first being the 3D BIOS which gives you a neat look at the components on the board individually. This allows you to select certain aspects of the board, and to tweak them bit by bit. If like us, you prefer the advanced side of things, Gigabyte have catered for us by including an Advanced Mode, which gives a lot more options and settings to tweak and change. For us, it's all about the frequency, memory and voltage settings that can be changed within the M.I.T section. This allows us to push this board and its components as far as possible by overclocking. Before we get overclocking, let's take a look at the other components that we'll be working with. To test this board, we are able to run all of our tests at stock speeds using a pre-defined setup of hardware. We will also be overclocking the processor to 4.6GHz to see how the board compares against the stock speed. Also in terms of overclocking, we will be looking to see how far we can push the processor. Test system: Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 Intel Core i7 3770k Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz 16GB AMD Radeon HD 7970 Corsair H80 Corsair HX1050 Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Lian Li T60 3 x AOC E2795VH We would like to thank AOC, Asus, Corsair, Kingston and Lian Li for supplying us with our test system components. Many different software applications are also used to gain the broadest spectrum of results, which allows for the fairest testing possible. Software used: 3DMark 11 AIDA64 Cinebench R11.5 CPU-Z PCMark 7 Metro 2033 Super PI All I can say, is that I wish we had the first i7 3770k that we had in our labs, as this one was a real pain to clock. We started out with a 46x multiplier which was fine with some basic voltage tweaks to 1.35V and Load Line Calibration set to Extreme. Pushing beyond that seemed nigh on impossible though. The 48x multiplier was a no go from the offset, no matter how many volts you chucked at it, and no matter what the calibration and PWM settings were tweaked to. Instead we decided on the 47x multiplier, which required 1.4V to run stable at, though not happy with this, we decided to tweak the BCLK. No matter what we did, the BCLK was not going to budge while using the 47x multiplier. By dropping to the 46x multiplier, we could increase the BCLK, but not to a substantial level that would surpass 4.7GHz. With that in mind, we finally settled on 47x100 @ 1.4V, which isn't bad, but isn't fantastic, but on a clock for clock basis, we have to remember that IvyBridge and SandyBridge have no comparison, as these new chips are faster, clock for clock, but can't quite be pushed as far as our trusty i7 2700k can. 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. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It's completely free. Starting off with Cinebench and taking a look at the stock performance, we can see that the G1.Sniper M3 gives some solid numbers and falls just above some of the other boards around. By overclocking to 4.6GHz, the score in Cinebench is increased to a respectable 9.45. Super PI Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point—up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses Gauss–Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute pi to 232 digits. Moving over to Super PI, we see a time of 9 minutes and 17 seconds which is slightly quicker than some of the other boards we tested, but only marginally. By overclocking the CPU to 4.6GHz, we saw 2 minutes and 4 seconds being shaved off of the calculation time. 3DMark 11 3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online. Moving over to gaming related benchmarks and 3DMark 11, we can see that at stock, the G1.Sniper M3 gave some solid results which is comparable to the other boards we tested. When overclocked, the scores shot forward by a small amount, yet the Maximus V Gene from Asus managed to outperform it, but at stock speeds. Metro 2033 Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter game based in the Russian metro system. Metro 2033 is very similar to the much loved game STALKER as it is developed by the same programmers. The game utilises DirectX 11 and relies heavily on tessellation features and is considered to be one of the most graphics intense games on the market. With Metro 2033, we saw the Sniper M3 giving the same results as the other boards we tested. The overclock allowed an extra 1FPS on both resolutions, but this is nothing that is noticeable. AIDA64 AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Taking a look at memory bandwidth and how it compares, we see the G1.Sniper M3 giving results that are nothing out of the ordinary at stock with other boards giving similar speeds. When overclocked, we saw the speeds get a nice boost across rear, write and copy. AIDA64 AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Sticking with AIDA, but taking a look at SATA III performance, we see the G1.Sniper M3 being at the higher end of our scale when looking at how it compares against other boards. When overclocked, the performance was boosted more by 2MB/s. PCMark 7 PCMark 7 provides a set of 7 suites for measuring different aspects of PC performance with a high degree of accuracy. Overall system performance is measured by the PCMark Suite. The Lightweight Suite measures the capabilities of entry level systems and mobility platforms unable to run the full PCMark suite. Common use performance is measured by the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity scenario suites. Component performance is measured by the Computation and Storage hardware suites. The Storage suite is ideal for testing SSDs and external hard drives in addition to the system drive. Taking a look at overall system performance, we can see that within PCMark7, the G1.Sniper M3 performed the best out of our various boards tested. When overclocked to 4.6GHz, the score was boosted to 6324 points. AIDA64 AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Going back into AIDA and this time taking a look at USB 3.0 performance, we see the board maxing out our drive at 287MB/s and when overclocked, seeing a slight decrease, but only by 1MB/s.To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the system takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment. Being a Micro-ATX board, we were keen to see how its power usage would reflect in these tests. At idle, the board uses 72 Watts but at load, uses an extremely low 217 Watts which is a lot less than the other boards we tested, including the Maximus V Gene from Asus. When overclocked, the power levels increases slightly, but still managed to stay under 300 Watts at load. I've made it pretty clear that I'm a big fan of the G1 series of motherboards, and actually used the G1.Sniper 2 for quite some time in my own personal rig, though most will see me ranting about Asus boards most of the time. With that in mind, I do still have muchos love for Gigabyte and believe that their products are getting stronger and stronger, and Z77 has been a great outlet to show this. Z77 has probably been the strongest contender for Gigabyte as they had so many different boards at launch and as soon as the Micro-ATX Sniper M3 was announced, I instantly got goosebumps. This happened purely because Gigabyte haven't really delved into the Micro-ATX world, when it comes to high-end components, so it was a big gamble to take, but for the most part; looks as though it's paid off. Style wise, is always going to be a love/hate Marmite situation, but for me; I love it. It's different, quirky, unique and certainly has a specialist market, but for a board that offers specialist gaming sound and networking capabilities, you couldn't exactly imagine your Granddad using it, could you? Performance wise, we saw some strong figures coming from this board at stock, and when overclocked, the results were boosted quite dramatically across most tests, showing that this board can clock, as well as being aimed at the hardcore gamers out there. In terms of overclockability, we were able to get a reasonable overclock, but due to our CPU being a darn right bad clocker, we didn't see the results that we'd really hoped for. This isn't the boards fault however, and we believe that with the right chip, 4.8GHz and possibly even 4.9GHz could be achieved, so maybe we can revisit things in the future. We said at the start that this board seems to pack a punch in terms of features and performance, and we certainly wasn't wrong. We also said that it does skimp out, and at $179, it is definitely attractively priced, at the lower end of the Z77 scale. When compared to its big brother; the G1 Sniper 3, the price different is quite astounding, with the full-sized ATX board coming in at $279, a whole $100 more expensive, and from what we can see, the only main differences are the faster memory speed and extra PCI-Express expansion slots. In terms of expansion slots, the G1.Sniper M3 isn't exactly lacking, and the overall layout and choice of slots has been carefully chosen and in our opinion is spot on with what the consumer wants. As per usual, with a G1 board, you get a good set of bundled features including stickers and a poster, but even the little things, like a slightly more upmarket rear I/O panel, and the choice of blue or black SATA cables with locking pins and right-angled connectors. These all add up in terms of cost, but Gigabyte seemed to have swallowed the cost themselves, instead of passing it onto the consumer as we've seen with the sumptuous price tag. All in all, I can honestly say that the G1.Sniper M3 has managed to carry on the G1 series legacy, if not improving it slightly along the way. Micro-ATX versions of high-end boards are always going to be hit or miss, and Gigabyte have clearly done their research and developed a winner here, and that's why it deserves none other than our Editor's Choice Award.