Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5 (LGA 2011-3) Motherboard Review

Ryan Martin / 10 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing (accurate at the time of writing)

Gigabyte’s X99 Gaming 5 motherboard is priced at $294.99 at Amazon and $298.99 at Newegg in the USA. In the UK it can be had for £199.99 at Overclockers. Gigabyte provide a three year warranty on this product.

Summary

Gigabyte’s X99 Gaming 5 brings forward the “lessons learned” with Z97 to the new Intel X99 platform. While the X99 platform may be “extreme” and for “enthusiasts” this motherboard still has its heart set on gamers, and it does well at targeting that market. Gigabyte’s core focus is still on networking and audio which I think is done very well at a hardware level – particularly the audio which has so many useful extras like gain switches, a headphone amplifier and so on.

On the the software side Gigabyte are improving but I still would like to see a better unification of their software environment – there are too many software utilities, plus separate third party software for the networking and audio and it gets confusing. It is great that so much is offered on the software side but better presentation is crucial to making sure end-users are able to take advantage of it, at the moment it’s enough to swamp you – Gigabyte could learn a thing or two from the unity of rival motherboard software packages.

While on the subject of software let’s make the small jump to firmware and discuss the BIOS. As I mentioned earlier on the BIOS is good at a feature level and also a visual level. However, I look forward to Gigabyte splatting some more bugs over the course of the coming months. I also hope they will “tidy up” the classic mode BIOS because it feels a little rough around the edges and my delete key nearly fell off after I had numerous issues with getting into the Gigabyte BIOS on boot. Overall the BIOS looks good and is good, but I am constrained to judge the fairly early BIOS revisions given how close this review is to the X99 launch, right now the BIOS is a little glitchy/buggy. Of course over time expect the BIOS to mature into a more well-rounded product.

In terms of performance the Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5 does well – it performs admirably across the bulk of our tests offering a solid platform, for gaming and CPU based tasks as well as having excellent networking and audio performance which we’ve already mentioned. Gigabyte do need to improve their memory performance: with future BIOS releases I hope they can do this, I was especially surprised to see that memory performance declined with CPU clock speed, this should not be the case. Although, you are welcome to bash me for the fact this will have no impact on real world usage or performance.

The Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5 is a well-rounded motherboard package for gamers. It successfully achieves Gigabyte’s own 4 pillars of the G1 Gaming series which are excellence in: audio, networking, looks and performance. There are other areas where Gigabyte could consider improving, such as on the software side, but overall the X99 Gaming 5 offers a solid package. Currently the X99 line-up is very competitive at the £200 and lower price point, as a result I see Gigabyte’s Gaming 5 being challenged by their own UD4 offering but also rival branded motherboards. I think on this occasion the Gigabyte X99 Gaming offers enough to see off the competition thanks to its improved audio, digital power design, 4-Way GPU support and excellent connectivity, but in the medium term I think a price drop would be beneficial to its competitiveness.

Pros

High quality audio and networking – good for gamers
Clean design and “safe” looks – addition of chipset LED is nice
Dual BIOS options, new BIOS update method
Excellent variety of storage and peripheral connectivity
4-Way GPU support
Good variety of software (but needs overall simplification…too many separate programs)

Cons

BIOS is a little on the buggy side
Memory performance could be improved
Not clear where to acquire the optional WiFi module, should be included at this price

“For a X99-based Gaming system the Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5 makes a great choice. It has top notch audio, high quality networking and support for an abundance of connectivity and hardware. Paired with a flagship GPU and a Haswell-E CPU you’ll be future proofed for 4K gaming.”