Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 Z68 Motherboard Review

First things first, the styling. It’s going to be one of those Marmite boards and we can clearly be put into the love category for us, as it simply is amazing to look at and as stated earlier, reminds me of the DFI LANParty days, and who knows. Maybe that’s where they got their ideas from? The only problem that I can see is the colour coding in your system, as most components feature red or blue or black and very rarely will you find a green graphics card, let alone green memory and a green cooler but we’re not ones to be picky, as it stands out and makes a bold statement and that’s what it’s all about.

There are so many boards on the market, that claim to be aimed at the gaming market and they simply aren’t. They don’t offer anything more to the gamer, so what separates them from the rest? The G1.Sniper 2 actually does offer you more in the way of the Creative X-Fi sound and the Bigfoot Killer NIC which all give a certain edge to the extreme gamer. It allows them to hear gunshots and footprints when an ordinary user wouldn’t be able to. It also allows them to play a multiplayer game without the fear of lag or latency issues and these can all be seen as major advantages.

Whilst overclocking isn’t implied massively by this board, it still caters for some light tweaking, if you so wish. We find a couple of overclocking buttons, but nothing to the extreme, like we’d find with the X58-OC or other similar boards. They feature a power button, reset button and other features that an enthusiast overclocker would need, but this board isn’t aimed at them. It’s aimed at gamers and they don’t need the bells and whistles that other boards have and claim to be aimed at gamers, they simply aren’t.

For those who don’t want to overclock, you’ll find the performance to be that similar to other boards of this nature, and when paired with an i5 2500k or i7 2600k and a good memory/graphics combination, you can only be on towards good things and this board will help you get the very most out of it.

The addition of the Killer NIC and Creative X-Fi sound has had a dampening effect on one particular aspect of this board; the price. At a hefty £299.62, it’s not the cheapest board on the market and it seems that along with the X58 styling, the price followed. With other similiar boards being sub £250 and offering more in terms of x16 graphics capabilities, it does make us wonder who would want to spend all of their hard earned cash on this.

Overall, it’s a great board that clearly stands above the competition, but the major thing that stands out in our eyes, is the price that simply can’t be ignored, and from a gamers point of view, I’d rather spend the extra money on upgrading my graphics card, as I’d see a much better return.