G1 Assassin Review - Performance

G1 Assassin Review- Performance.
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Steven B.

When I wrote the physical review of this board, I had a hard time not expressing the fact that every aspect of the G1 Assassin impressed me. To be honest most of GIGABYTE’s boards spark this enthusiasm and love for computer hardware in me, but this board more than most because of all its features. After going over every physical and electronic aspect of the G1 Assassin, I am going to take a look at its performance, features, and overclocking.
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For a true in depth motherboard review it is important to focus on not only CPU/RAM/GPU benchmarks, but also the unique features each board has. For many motherboards this would be USB 3.0, SATA6G, maybe an NF200, and some nice power delivery. This board has a powerful 16 phase VRM, tons of USB 3.0, and the fastest add on SATA6G; but the Bigfoot Killer NIC and Creative X-Fi really are two great features that have been embedded deep inside this boards PCB and they deserve a fair examination. It is very hard to benchmark or test audio without the proper equipment (which sadly I do not have), it will be up to personal taste to talk about its many aspects. The Bigfoot NIC on the other hand has built in software that measures ping and even FPS among other things, the best part is that this software can be installed on other systems without the NIC, and can provide ping and FPS results. Before we begin I would like to highlight that while this board is not made for Overclockers, it overclocks pretty well. I used a nice air-cooler for all overclocking and benchmarks and I used two CPUs i7 930 and i7990X as well as my good old X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 for comparison.

I have already done a physical review of this board, so if you want to know how the board works and what every major chip does and the odds and ends of the board please follow this link: G1 Assassin Physical Review

I will section this performance review into a few segments:

#1 Overview of the board and functions.
#2 Bigfoot e2100 vs. Realtek 8111E and Creative 20K2
#3 Included Software
#4 Overclocking Results and Test Setup
#5 Benchmark Results
#6 SATA6G Comparisons
#7 Power Consumption and Load Line Calibration
#8 Conclusion

Here are the differences between the G1 Assassin, Sniper, and Guerilla:
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/5715/g1boards.png


Overview of the Board and Functions:

This section is short. It will focus on the board and how the components fit and how the PCI-E spacing is setup and how much clearance the CPU socket area facilitates. I will also cover some of the LEDs and the OC Panel.
Let’s start off with a picture I had in my previous review:
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3691/layoutbm.jpg

It is very self-explanatory, but seeing the features in action is even a bit better. Here are some shots of the LEDs in the dark:

http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/8190/ledscustom.jpg

Now the board doesn’t automatically light up like a Christmas tree, and it also doesn’t light up this much. You have to raise a lot of the voltages, practically all to get the yellow, orange, and red LEDs. The green LEDs (normal settings) will come on if you want them too, and all you need to do is run the Dynamic Energy Saver2 program to initiate the LEDs.

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/3...ledscustom.jpghttp://img156.imageshack.us/img156/8...ledscustom.jpg

Here you can see the G1 LEDs built into the heatsink and the frequency and phase LEDs. The LEDs in general are a great indicator of temperature and voltage, just like they are supposed to be. It is better to use software to monitor temperature and voltage, physical measurements would even be better. Just know that when your board is lit up like a Christmas tree you should either be proud or worried. The user does have the option of turning off all the lights.


http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/8398/noboost.jpghttp://img62.imageshack.us/img62/1369/yesboost.jpg

The OC panel is a really great thing, personally I used to be really big into case modding, and I would have loved to have a front panel OC button. This board in particular has a front panel OC button, while the other boards in this series have a back panel one. The front panel bezel has 2x USB 3.0 and 1x eSATA and USB 2.0 ports as well as the OC button which increases BLCK by 7 MHz even. This can provide about 200mhz overclock depending on the CPU multiplier.

The math is simple because 133MHz is always the stock bus speed. If you have an i7 930 processor it is rated at 2800 MHz, you take that and divide by 133MHz and you get a multiplier of 21x. Now multiply 21x by your new 140MHz and you get 2940MHz. About 150MHz overclock. On the other hand if you have an i7 950 you have a 23x multiplier so 140 blck would land you with 3220MHz, which is over 200MHz increase. A 7MHz increase in baseclock (BLCK) is not hard to achieve, it requires no voltage increase, so you can try the OC panel and get into overclocking, because this board overclocks like a champ.

While this board is ATX-XL form factor and only fits in a handful of cases it does give the user more than enough room for every component. We have extra spacing between the CPU cooler and the RAM slots so that you can fit an oversized CPU cooler and a fan on the side that the RAM lies on:

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http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/6...mclearance.jpg

This also means you can fit those fancy heatsinks for the RAM, and even an extra RAM fan that comes with some high-end kits.
Moving on to the PCI-E spacing; two triple slotted GPUs will fit easily into the 16x PCI-E slots. Also note that there is enough room between the RAM latches and the first GPU so that you can replace RAM without having to remove the GPU:
http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/5...kendcustom.jpg

One of the greatest things about this board is how much room you have to work with. Another great thing that you might have seen above in the first diagram is that all the fan ports are controllable and they are distributed evenly around the motherboard so you can control the case airflow. On top of that you have temperature sensors in critical areas that will help control airflow. You can actually setup EasyTune6 software to increase each fan’s speed depending on the temperature. GIGABYTE hit the nail on the head with this design.

There is one thing I do need to point out, the OC panel has its own connector, and this connector lies right underneath where the last 16X PCI-E slot is, so that your second dual slotted GPU will just make it past the clearance of the connector. I found that you need to make sure that the GPU clicks into place on the motherboard and you are fine:

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Other than this little issue which is solved by making sure your GPU is secure there are no problems with this board’s layout. Just make sure you buy an ATX-XL case, the HAF-X NVIDIA Edition goes well with this board I heard.

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Bigfoot Killer e2100 vs Realtek 8111E

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Now it is important to say that the G1 Assassin has the Bigfoot Killer e2100 and that the X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 has the Realtek 8111E. Both systems used an i7 930 in these next benchmarks.
One of the greatest things about this network controller is its software (you can use the software on non-killer systems, but only the ping and FPS monitoring work):

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Above you can see how different programs have different priorities. While every game will automatically be set to priority #1, I had a little issue.

Steam + e2100 + Verizon FIOS problem/fix!
After being kicked out of every sever I tried to join within 3 minutes of joining, I had to contact Bigfoot customer service after I contacted EA customer service. First off they were very helpful and walked me through many steps to try and get everything figured out. They even have a built in system diagnosis tool which generates a file that can be used by Bigfoot to diagnose the problem. Sadly nothing worked, and finally I found out why. I was asked about my ISP, and I replied Verizon FIOS 15mb/s download and 3mb/s upload. There is a known problem with the Bigfoot NIC and Verizon FIOS service in particular. When the user tries to use Steam to play a game, the game is set to priority #1; the fix is to set priority #2 if you are in my exact shoes. That is it! Find the game and set it to priority #2 if you have Verizon FIOS and are using Steam. Bigfoot said they are taking care of this problem and it should be fixed in a matter of weeks.

Moving on to other aspects of the program, it logs information on many different statistics all at the same time, and you have the ability to save a log:

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We also have advanced settings and network settings, which can be very useful. The program automatically optimizes your computers network:

http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/736/network.png

The Bigfoot e2100 is meant to do 3 things. #1 bypass the windows network stack, #2 speed up the transfer of network packets on your side of the router from the internet to your game and back to the internet, #3 reduce latency, ping, and increase FPS by doing #1 & #2.

While it is very hard to test both systems in the same exact scenario, we can do a few things to even out the playing field. First we play only one game through Steam; Battlefield Bad Company 2(its actually very fun to play). This game has a very large online following, and it’s played in teams. I used the same level for both tests, and I made sure to test with the same team playing the same side of the level. It was not an easy task to do. I then used the Bigfoot Network Manager’s built logging function and played the game for 30 minutes. After that I picked out 50 points (every 36th point) from both logs and put them into a graph. I had the FPS recorded at the same time. Your results are going to vary because everyone’s internet connection is different.

Here are the results for UDP (Bigfoot’s Custom Measurement of Ping) Ping:


http://img852.imageshack.us/img852/5721/pingz.png

Now here is the difference between UDP and ICP Ping from Bigfoot Networks:

Quote:

---

Average ICMP Ping – this is the standard measurement of ping, using the Windows network stack and
its “ping” command. This is the latency measured from the user’s PC to a Bigfoot Networks-maintained
server in North America. This is meant to show the baseline performance of a user’s network connection to a standard host, much like a blood pressure reading will give a good idea of a patient’s overall health. If this changes dramatically, the user can see that there might be issues with his or her network connection, and can diagnose properly.
Average UDP Ping – this is a Bigfoot Networks’ custom measurement of ping. This uses UDP traffic, the traffic that Killer offloads from the CPU and sends around the Windows Network Stack. This measures the latency to the same server as mentioned above, and will usually show a LOWER number than the ICMP ping. This is because Killer E2100 offloads UDP traffic – the traffic used by most games.

---

The reason the results are pretty different is because of the type of measure of ping. As you can see the Bigfoot NIC keeps my UDP ping low compared to Realtek. The difference was noticeable. In the past my game would randomly lag during gameplay and I would die, now I don’t have any lag with the Bigfoot NIC, but I also play on servers with very low ping. I had a little discussion with a friend, and it turns out my internet connection is pretty fast and the servers I connected to had very low pings themselves and that is why I didn’t notice any lag. I do want to say that the Killer e2100 does really everything it can to speed up the game experience, it cannot control the Internet itself, but it can control how your computer and game interacts with it.
Please note that the G1 Assassin surpasses the X58A-UD5 in all 3D benchmarks and real life scenarios by a pretty nice margin, probably due to internal latency tweaks for 3D performance over CPU performance. The NIC and the Audio offload CPU and memory resources as well to an extent.


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Now while it is not obvious from the graph which is better, I had Excel do an average of each set of FPS:
Bigfoot: 157.2745 FPS
Realtek: 148.7255 FPS

The winner is easily the G1 Assassin with the Bigfoot Killer e2100




The Creative 20K2 XF-I and 5 Audio Amplifiers:

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/1480/audioics.jpg

It is very hard to properly test Audio on a computer motherboard. All I can say is that this board has phenomenal audio, and the fact that the audio card is built in means you don’t waste PCI-E lanes on a sound card and your GPUs can run full speed 16x. Since this XF-I has its own memory means that you don’t use your system memory. This also means that the CPU is not loaded by the other onboard sound solutions. All in all that results in a board with top notch performance. One more thing to mention is the 5 audio amplifiers. There is even an amplifier for the front panel header that can drive at 150Ω. There are also 4 amplifiers for the backpanel ports that can drive at 200 Ω.
The sound processing unit (SPU) is the Creative CA20K2-2AG HF. It is a digital audio processor based on the 20K2 architecture. It features OpenAL 3d Audio, X-Fi Extreme, CMOS-3D, X-Fi Crystallizer, a RISC processor.

Most importantly it has a 24-bit Digital Audio I/O, 8 audio inputs and 8 audio output, up to 128 channels, and even up to 384 KHz sample rate! This audio processor is a beast. ASIO support is there for those who make their own music!

The audio amplifiers are:

STMicroelectronics C4558 Dual high Speed Low-Noise Operational Amplifiers, which can drive up to 200 Ω loads. One these is actually hooked up to the line out in the front, the other three are as follows: Center/Subwoofer, Rear left/Right, and side surround. left/right. The front panel uses: New Japan Radio 4556A high current high output dual operational amplifier, the #7 is connected to the line out in the rear of the board. This bad boy is capable of driving 150 Ω loads.

The XF-I software and EAX5.0 are pretty cool:

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Other than game mode we have entertainment mode and audio creation mode:
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The hardware is so well imbedded into the motherboard that the NIC and the audio have their own power supplies. The Audio has the ability to be processed in full digital and played back in full analogue. With the software we have full control over digital encoding and every aspect you can think of. The software automatically went into game mode when I played a game, and when I played a movie it went into entertainment mode. I never made audio, nor do I know how to, so it never went into the audio creation mode above.
In use:
I have a pair of Sennheiser PXC150 sound cancelling headphones with built in bass tubes and these headphones come alive when I use the built in audio on this board. With the 3D effects I can actually hear other gamers coming up behind me a knifing me! I am not so great at gaming, but I probably have the best game experience on the battlefield. There is no way to express how good the sound is on this motherboard, and I have bought creative sound cards in the past, this board has to be seen and heard in person for someone to gain respect for the quality. This motherboard made it to my new 24/7 system board.

Included Software:
While talking about software isn’t what I am known for doing, it is VERY important for me to show you some of the best features GIGABYTE had provided with this board. Take a look at the well-known EasyTune6 for this board specifically:
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As you can see there are 5 fan headers, 5 temperature sensors nearby, and the ability to control many aspects of this dynamic system. The extra Winbond HW monitoring IC adds support to the iTE HW monitoring chip. This fan control is something that is also on the new X58A-OC board made for overclockers.
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Some of you are saying: “finally GIGABYTE got 5 SMART fan headers!!!!” I know I sure am.
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Dynamic Energy Saver 2 is the program that gives you an accurate wattage reading by way of the Intersil PWM which is the brain of the CPU power supply. You can see how many phases are in action, control the LEDs on the board, and even configure power saving for every component.
The last piece of software I want to look at is SMART6:
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This program is well known by GIGABYTE frequenters, but I like to show it off to others.
This program gives you a console for controlling those odds and ends of the system that only the motherboard can control. My favorite is Smart Dual BIOS, while this is a bit different than BIOS recovery which this board has; it is a way for you to store passwords and dates in your backup and main BIOS. Supposed a hacker or your enemy or girlfriend wants to access your email and wants to hack your passwords. Well they search every inch of your hard-drive and cannot find it because your passwords are in your BIOS!!!! It is a very unconventional storage method, and one I find so clever it is worth noting in every GIGABYTE review I do!!

Overclocking Results and Test Setups!

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Before I begin I want to say a few things. First off this board has already been released and the X58A-OC board is about to release. That board is meant for overclockers and this board is meant for gamers. Although this board is meant for gamers, it has a very beefy power supply for the CPU, the BIOS that all GIGABYTE X58 boards possess, and GIGABYTE’s X58 overclocking engineering. While saying that, technically most overclockers are gamers, but some are not. Personally I only play games once in a while or for benchmarks. As you can see this board doesn’t hold back in any aspect; 5.2 GHz is easily achieved on air cooling. Air cooling is used in every part of this review because this review is for gamers and those whole might not want to jump head over heels into water.

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There are two things that you should notice in the picture above. They are both circled in green:

Max CPU Clock: 5208mhz
Max Base Clock: 231.68mhz
Max RAM Frequency: 2100mhz
Can this board Overclock?
YES IT CAN!
Not only can it overclock but it gives us a very impressive BLCK without slow mode, as well as a very nice RAM speed. Overclocking CPU frequency is all in the CPU except for BLCK. The thing about the 6 core Gulftown processors is that their multipliers are high, so BLCK is never really an issue. The problem with Bloomfield processors is that they need BLCK to overclock with their lower multipliers; this board has the ability for very nice BLCK on air. 230 BLCK can yield a 4.8 GHz overclock for an i7 920(the lowest model CPU for this board). That is if you processor can do 4.8 GHz which most cannot on air.

Test Setups:
http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/1720/specsvk.png

Please notice that the 990X Extreme Edition overclock is VERY high (CPU and RAM) compared to the i7 930 overclocks on the UD5 and the G1 Assassin which are identical in nature.
Also notice that at stock the 990X has a 1333MHz RAM clock while the 930 setups have a stock 1066MHz RAM clock.
Let’s start with Synthetic 3D benchmarks:
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http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/5866/unigine.png

As you can see the G1 Assassin has a pretty great edge over the UD5 in both benchmarks. Let’s move on to real world gaming test:

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Here we can see the G1 Assassin system really shine. The 990x has a great impact on FPS, even though the FPS are extremely high in this game.
The bottom line is very clear, the G1 Assassin is a winner in 3D results most likely due to the fact that audio and LAN are offloaded from the CPU and RAM and more resources are freed up. Also every board is different when it comes to 3D, CPU, or RAM benchmarks, because every board has internal latencies that can be tuned. This board obviously has its tuned for 3D.
Now let’s move to synthetic CPU and Memory Benchmarks:
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http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7386/aidamemory.png

http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/5169/cinebench.png

http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/9118/superpi.png

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As you can probably tell the X58A-UD5 has some advantage over the G1 Assassin in CPU and some memory dependent benchmarks. SuperPI and Intel Burn Test are a great indicator of this. In AIDA64 the G1 is ahead in memory and behind in CPU, a good indicator of the impact that offloading RAM resources for the LAN and Audio.

http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/2624/sciencemark.png

http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/3876/winrar.png

Science Mark and Winrar are great indicators of real-world performance gains. As you can see the G1 seems to be on top in these two benchmarks.
What does this all mean?
The G1 assassin is on top in 3D Benchmarks the UD5 is ahead in CPU benchmarks, the G1 seems to be slightly ahead of the UD5 in memory. This means this board is made for 3D applications such as games.

SATA6G:
The Marvell SE9182 is a brand new SATA6G add-on controller. Its predecessor the SE9128 used one PCI-E 1x lane and a separate BIOS chip. This new chip uses two PCI-E 1x lanes and no separate BIOS. It performs like Intel SATA6G which is crowned the king, but it’s available on the X58 platform. The G1 series is the only board I have seen this on, we might also see this chip on the X58A-OC. For those of you who are SSD shy, 4k speeds are the most important. These are random file speeds and that is all about windows performance. The large sequential numbers mean close to nothing other than moving a large file or loading a game.

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Power Consumption and LLC:
Power consumption is measured at the wall socket. Now the GTX 570 makes up a very large portion of the power draw. For the max I run Furmark Multi-GPU with OCP disabled and I run Intel Burn Test at the same time. Needless to say I make my lights flicker.

http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/2819/usedpower.png

This board needs about 50 watts more than my X58A-UD5 rev 2.0. The Killer NIC and Creative Audio both have their own tiny 4Amp power supplies (total 3x4amps PSUs). The board also has two extra 4-pin Molex connectors which might also contribute to the total wattage. Make sure to not cheap out on the power supply. If you are going to do SLI and overclock very high then an 850 watt or 900 watt PSU is recommended. Above are just peak load results, in a game you will see about 100-200 watts lower, but this is to show that you need a good power supply no matter what. If you aren’t going to OC past 4ghz then a 650 watt PSU will do just fine even with an SLI setup. Just make sure you get a well-made PSU.

Load Line Calibration is a feature of every X58 motherboard and it reduces or eliminates vdroop. Voltage droop is part of Intel specs and really is beneficial in keeping the CPU within thermal specifications, but when overclocking it can cause instability, so instead of having to hard mod the motherboard, manufacturers came up with LLC. You need to realize that voltage is only part of the total power, the rest is amperage. In physics P=IV, wattage = amperage x voltage. The CPU (both of my CPUs) have a 130 watt TDP (Thermal Design Package). So theoretically you have to drop voltage to facilitate a raise in amperage to keep the processor within thermal specifications.
This is how LLC performs on this board:

http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/9518/llc.png

This is extremely impressive, and I hope this LLC carries over to the X58A-OC as I think it does from videos I have seen. That voltage regulation even without an oscilloscope looks pretty damn good.

Conclusion:

These are my final thoughts on the board:
I have to be honest with you this board costs a pretty penny, that being said I think it is worth every cent. A board with a $530 USD price tag can’t afford to have any problems, and this board doesn’t. Everything was smooth sailing. From a gaming perspective it has anything and everything a gamer would ever dream of. From a feature perspective this is the most feature filled GIGABYTE board I have ever laid my hands on. From an Overclocking perspective 230blck without slow mode, 5.2 GHz, and DDR3 2100MHz are just damn great for air cooling. The ability to do 4-way CrossFireX or fit in two triple slotted GPUs and have them run at 16x each without an NF200 puts this board in a class of its own. Adding integrated Creative 20K2 and Killer e2100 without taking up precious PCI-E lanes is just icing on top of the cake.

http://img859.imageshack.us/img859/9959/verynice.jpg


That being said this board is close to perfect, there are a few minor things that could be improved upon, such as onboard switches for power, reset, and CMOS. The board is ATX-XL so there is also a case compatibility list on GIGABYTE’s website. Those are the two biggest cons I see for this board, and those don’t even impact performance. The price of this board is set at $530 dollars, and while that might be a lot, think about the extra $220 that you would have spent on the Audio Card (Creative 20K2) and NIC (Killer e2100), if you weren’t going to buy those two things then this board might not be for you. This board is only for serious gamers who want the best, and GIGABYTE is offering that.

This board performs excellent when it comes to 3D benchmarks; it just wipes the floor clean. When it comes to CPU benchmarks it falls a bit behind, but picks up a few memory benchmark wins. The Killer NIC really does improve game play, and the XF-I audio teamed up with the amplifiers makes the game come to life. The bass tubes in my headphones work like they have never worked before. The SATA6G on this board matches or beats Intel’s SATA6G, and that is a feat I thought Marvell would never reach.
The matte black PCB that GIGABYTE uses is honestly the nicest true black PCB I have ever seen. It doesn’t reflect light like other “black” PCBs which are actually brown because of the copper burn through. The color schemes that GIGABYTE is using for this board and the X58A-OC are really neat. I have to say that this board has a very high aesthetic value, which coupled with GIGABYTE’s excellent build quality and attention to details makes this board a true winner. I personally wasn’t sure about the gun on my board, even though I go hunting, but it has grown on me.

I think the heatsinks are a metaphor for the board being a weapon.

If GIGABYTE provides for Overclockers with the X58A-OC like they do for Gamers with the G1 Assassin, then we are going to see a revolution in motherboard standards. The G1 Assassin gives Sandy Bridge overclocking a run for its money; I can’t wait to see how the X58A-OC will do!
I was told that GIGABYTE is offering $35 USD off this board with a special Newegg promo code. For the code you have to stop by the GIGABYTE booth at PAX EAST in Boston.
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/55/taipei.png

I would like to thank those at GIGABYTE from making this review possible!!!!!!!!

Amazing review man!!

I am going to have to take your review classes sometime soon! :D

Really, no onboard switches for this price? Maybe it's something GIGABYTE thought gamers wouldn't need as much as overclockers?

I guess not, they probably install the board and then move onto fraggin all night and never open the case much again after that except for to show off their shiny new board.

I have to say it again, great work here, I am really envious of your review style, and your awesome ability to convey your thoughts onto a web page :) Keep em coming :up:

Great follow up to the physical review.

Pretty interested in this board because of its gains in gaming, but I don't think I'm going to spring.

Well done never the less! Makes me definitely WANT it though.

can you throw that 990x into the ud5?

Hondacity- I actually can't and that is why I didn't have any benchmark results with the i7 990x and the UD5 because(the bigfoot tests were done with the 930) I put it in a computer for a family member. I will have another X58 board to put the 990x into soon so no worries, but it should OC the same in the UD5 rev 2.0, overclocking wise they are pretty similar. The results for the benchmarks should be the same too with the UD5 being better at CPU benches and the G1 at 3D. I put the 990x in there to help compare to the 930, plus for OCing. The 930 does 4.5ghz max on both boards. but the 990x's 5.2ghz puts 4.5ghz to shame lol.

Thank Ed i really appreciate it!

Flown, i like doing it this way so I put all the electrical stuff in one preview that i can get out quicker, and then take my time doing the benchmarking and overclocking. Soon though with the OC board it will be done a bit different, with OCing in the first part.

The bottom line is that I did not expect to be able to OC that well with this board. I was expecting good 3d results and the feature set to work well and they do.

nice review, even though the feature set on this board is not exactly what I would personally want, however it seems like a well rounded performer:up:

LSD pointed me to your review as he knew i was interested in getting this mobo and im glad he did. I've read and seen alot on this board though your review blew everything else out the water! Learned some stuff :D (Your other review gets rather technical, which i loved reading, though wont lie... I did get lost every now and then lol.

For someone like me who is a gamer though also overclocks, i wasn't sure how well this board would perform but im suprised to hear you got such a high overclock on air! What temps did you get if you dont mind me asking?

Once again, great review and was a pleasure to read. Hope to catch some more of your reviews :)

Silver

Hey Silver, nice to have you here. LSD is a great guy, his reviews are pretty damn great, his knowledge of RAM and SSDs far surpasses mine.

Um yes this board overclocks great, my temps at 4.8ghz were at 75-80C with an ambient of 25C.

I only took a few screenshots, but here is one of superpi, i know superpi is not much load but it can give you an idea of the temps at 5ghz.

i used 1.45v for 4.8ghz.

A watersetup or even a good air cooler can handle a 990x at those frequencies.

Honestly, its a great board, and its my main rig's motherboard now. Although it is feature packed, it still is a great overclocker.

LSD- thanks for sending him over :)

Hey up :)

Yeh i love his reviews too and boy has he helped me out with the tons of questions ive thrown his way since ive been chatting to him.

Wow that's some decent temps you got! Though i cant see the pic? lol

Im just about to upgrade from my UD7 which has been a great board for me. I'm more than likely pairing it up with the 970 (I cant work out why you would buy the 990x over the 970 myself?) though anywhere near 4.8ghz is amazing on air!

As LSD knows i was hesitant about purchasing the new G1 until i had found a decent review, so thanks again! :D

Silver

unbelivible

Idk y but I usually don't comment on reviews....

But this one is freakin awesome !!!! :clap:

I want to do a review on 2 6990's but I need a sponsor :( lol

Sorry to put damper on things, but this much difference between X58 boards in some tests (realy 20 FPS min FPS ?) I stil have to see it myself to believe... I'm really surprised to see so many (blind) followers... or am I the only sceptical one wandering around here...

I admire your devotion Sin, but I think we might have crossed a certain line here... A CPU overclock is more CPU limited then board limitation... 5.2 on air, not really hapenning if the CPU ain't gonna do it.. Mine does 5ghz on air on all boards, ... If the CPU ain't cooperating forget about PWMs, board design etc... all marketing bull...

I'm concerned about possible CPU damage with over 1.4V of VTT. Has this been a problem for you? I have plenty of thermal room to overclock more, but I'm nervous to pump the voltage higher for fear of damaging the $1k cpu.

You need 1.4Vtt for 12Gb 1600Mhz ?

CPU is fine as long as you keep difference betweent VTT and vDIMM at 0.5 - 0.3V. Each mobo reacts different, some like tigher (0.3V), some allow you those 0.5.

1.4V with 1.65V is bit tight, though it should work, if mobo is capable having it stable..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Leeghoofd

Sorry to put damper on things, but this much difference between X58 boards in some tests (realy 20 FPS min FPS ?) I stil have to see it myself to believe... I'm really surprised to see so many (blind) followers... or am I the only sceptical one wandering around here...

I admire your devotion Sin, but I think we might have crossed a certain line here...

It starts to look more like a marketing rollercoaster then anything else... think you are overdoing it ...

---

+1 to that.
Same goes for the Killer NIC tests. I don't buy it. Do it like this.
Make sure to use TCPOptimizer 3.0.6 for the on-board card as well. Remember to disable Win7 network throttling. I can tell you'll see 1-2ms difference on average (look here, here) if you're lucky. If not then Killer NIC will end up behind like shown here.
Seriously, there are no magical fairy powers needed to work with 5-10KB of data every second. It will not overclock the speed of light to make your data go down the copper lines faster, either. The difference is marginal. It's cool and is something to show off to your friends ("Hey guys, my new NIC has more RAM than your graphics cards!"), and this is pretty much what G1 line is about.
I really like Gigabyte and I think they are the best motherboard manufacturer atm. No need to go over the line hyping them up, though. This might have side effects.

How do the UD5 and G1 handle multi-GPU setups? NF200? reduced bandwidth on the UD5?

The pricetag really doesn't match the performance difference...which is generally minimal. Memory handling IS a little better on the G1, which would explain the SPi numbers.

I guess this board is to gaming what LN2 is for benching... the means to the final few % of performance, regardless of price.



Other than some over-enthusiasm, can't fault the review though, really nice work :)

so there is some snake oil in this review:ROTF:

However I really can't wait to buy an X58A OC however that looks like the last 1366 board I will be buying

All the reviews ive seen on this board have been good, just this one was more detailed.

Rather than saying the review is flawed.... Maybe you should prove it?

Nothing wrong with being enthusiastic if your into a product.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silver420

Rather than saying the review is flawed.... Maybe you should prove it?

---

I have 4 reviews linked in my post above. I can come up with like 10 more showing that there's no huge difference.
Maybe you should read them. :rolleyes:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silver420

Nothing wrong with being enthusiastic if your into a product.

---

Nah, it's actually a good thing. Makes for more interesting reviews. ;)

I meant a review on the board itself.

For me its a choice between this board and the X58A-OC

As i wont be going for "extreme temps" to me it seems the G1 board will OC just as well though will have benefits in gaming, which i cant complain about.

.... at minimum twice the price....

930 stock results(ud5 and g1).... are'nt side by side..weird

and comparing 930 stock results ...weird

I got a huge difference in 3d tests only.. I stand by my results because i run the benchmark and then list the score. It was that much better in 3D results end of the story. The X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 lost in 3d benchmarks to my P67A-UD7 with an NF200. If i toss P67A-UD7 results in there it beats the G1 assassin. Why is it so hard to believe that the G1 assassin wins in 3d? my results are the ones i got from benchmarks, and i don't take screenshots of every run or else i would have 300gigs of pictures. I write all my results down, to be honest most of the UD5 rev 2.0 3d benchmarks are from my P67A-UD7 performance review, they were not done right now against this systems, some were redone becuase I didn't have the data.

Next time if you want just screenshots instead of pictures just ask, its be much easier on me not to turn them into graphs, then you can visit imageshack 300 times.

leeghoofd- yes CPU like that is limited by the CPU, but many people, some even were told that this board wouldn't be able to OC at all. Like OC limited, and that is just not the case and I wanted to show that it can OC just as well as any other board. You work for madshrimps no? 231blck without slow mode on air isn't bad? i was actually disappointed with that results, until i stood back and thought for a second wow that ain't bad at all.

Well here is one of your friend, the ONLY other review I could find that compares 3d results against another board, and well his results are different than mine, he puts this board much farther ahead. Please don't say you have seen reviews, when you do not own the board, nor are there ANY other reviews that pin this board up against another.

Oh and about the 20fps, lol the max FPS there is something like 600, 20 is nothing. Compared to other results that put this board ahead by 1 or 2 FPS and they are doing 60 FPS, then 1/60 compared to 600 fps=10fps in comparison.
COD4 also has to do with how its played. I state that benchmarks can always vary. Why don't you look at average FPS, instead of the min and max, that is just stupid, next time i will just put average, because supposed i hit start benchmark a few seconds late or something when part of the video was playing then that would skew the min results.

here is the only other site that compared this board to another in 3d:
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/382/proof1m.png

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

read the review he even puts the board ahead in every aspect:
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2012&pageID=10252

And hey silver, sorry i thought I uploaded it, here it is:
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/1604/73803476.th.png

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

BTW i can recreate any of those G1 assassin scores, so if you want see stock vs overclocked just ask :)

BTW i do not turn phyx off for vantage, i also do not use the hwbot unigine benchmark.

Maybe the guy who said about the bigfoot should read which type of ping I chose.

buy one or get one and test for yourself against a UD5 rev 2.0. I stand by my results that strongly that i would be ok with you spending 500 bucks to find out that i was right.

The funny part is i hate comparing boards, even same platform boards because i think that it is never fair. Except when i just show stock vs OC like other sites do, i get :banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:ed at for not showing two different boards, and then when i do people call foul lol. Next time I will show you pictures, i am searching now for some for the UD5 rev 2.0. I remember for the P67A-UD7 performance review I started to take screenshots because the UD7 beat the UD5 so badly, and then idk what happened to them. I have a handmade spreadsheet with all the results and it makes my life easier. The funny part is you should see some other reviews with 3d performance like the UD7 being raped in 3d by the M4E and no one says anything about it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by K404

.... at minimum twice the price....

---

Price dont concern me considering what this board has to offer.

Cheers for the picture Steven :up: Your temps are unreal! Jealous slightly! :D

As soon as ive made my mind up on what processer im getting (970 vs 990x), ill be ordering it with this board :D

Edit: Only thing i would have hoped for would have been a CMOS reset button :S and like the UD9 4 x16 PCIe rather than 2x16 and 2x8

Quote:

---

If i toss P67A-UD7 results in there it beats the G1 assassin

---

i think this info is enough for prospective buyers...

its not the ud7 alone..its the whole sandybridge/ivy bridge architecture...

actually you are in luck i have a screenshot my UD5 rev 2.0 vantage results:
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/4...arkvantage.png

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

and i will run vantage again for the G1, give me a second to put in the 930.

Hondacity yes, but the 990x beats the P67A-UD7 results i was referring to the i7 930. of course this board is also about the audio and the NIC.

Ok here we go with the G1 assassin. this is a quick and dirty test, notice how high my temps went with the augmented vcore. I didn't remember the exact settings i used, but I am sure the score could have been better.

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/4...geg1medium.png

Uploaded with ImageShack.us


Bottom line I am not out to fool anyone, so please realize that i stand behind all my posted results.

As for the bigfoot tests, i tested like the guide for testing it said to do. As you can see there is only really a large difference within your computer, it cannot speed up the internet. The difference between the boards 3d performance is the reason for the FPS increase on the G1 assassin compared to the UD5 in the bigfoot tests. Maybe the bigfoot increase the FPS a little, and if you read anything i said about the bigfoot you would see there is no snake oil in my review. Thanks for you comments, even though you attacked my work it is ok, i always have proponents and opponents to everything I say, well every reviewer does, its part of the business. Sadly I have nothing to gain from saying this board is better than another board, i make no money off this, i don't make advertising money and gigabyte doesn't pay me, especially doesn't pay to say hey this board is better than another gigabyte board. Imagine what people would say if I said this board is better than an asus board lol.

Many have their own views on the bigfoot NIC, bottom line if it didn't do anything then people would not buy it, and it wouldn't have survived for this many years. you guys aren't stupid and neither am i, we would never buy a product that didn't perform and neither would anyone else. FYI anadatech also said the C300 sucks, and they are wrong, they said its performance decreased over time due to lack of trim, well it has been proven over and over that ITGC is much more powerful on the C300 than anadatech said. There is tons of bias to review sites, and i try to be unbiased but no one is perfect. I also never fudge results, i can go back and rerun if anyone wants me too, but the thing is that these reviews take me so much time, that I simply don't have time to skew any results, i don't even have time to take screenshots, but luckily i saved my ass by backing up all my pictures recently.

Next time I will have screenshots as thumbnails and graphs as well like LSDMEASAP does it, that way none of this snake oil bs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

Next time I will have screenshots as thumbnails and graphs as well like LSDMEASAP does it, that way none of this snake oil bs.

---

I was just kidding about the snake oil comment buddy:toast:

however I can not wait to see the X58A OC when it comes out:up:

well done sin and its good that you stand by your results and you should be accountable for them and make sure they do check out :)

keep at it dude well done :up:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by l0ud_sil3nc3

however I can not wait to see the X58A OC when it comes out:up:

---

Yeah, same. Soon, I hope.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hondacity

and comparing 930 stock results ...weird

---

Gigabyte Oz sponsors the biggest and best gaming team in the region called Team Immunity. These guys know their stuff and what they told me surprised the hell out of me, a great majority of gamers run their systems at STOCK everything so i'd say using stock numbers on platforms is certainly a good idea as that is what most machines will run at.

you missed the context...

read teh review...ud5 and g1 ..at stock...and yeah comparing them...

i don't understand your point

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

Maybe the guy who said about the bigfoot should read which type of ping I chose.

---

"The guy" read all of it.
You mention two types of ping (UDP and ICMP which you don't use anyway), and you use UDP for testing both cards.
Here's your graph:

http://img852.imageshack.us/img852/5721/pingz.png

As I see, your minimum ping is around 5ms (so the server has to be within the same city or so). The maximum is around 95ms.
You're not going to see 18 times difference. Not unless you have something in the background messing with your connection or you have packet loss.
Normal deviation for ping would be >5% for a great line (see http://www.pingtest.net/, you should have 1-2ms jitter on a good line; this is not UDP, but can test the line just as well).
Ordinary people with "normal", not so oustanding ISPs can see 20-30% deviation. Say, ping going from 70 to 90. That's fine.
But no way it's going to jump like that. (1800% deviation is insane).
A better card can help with jitter (if the old one has issues), but not this much.
A good example from another review:

http://images.mmorpg.com/features/44...s/PingTest.jpg

It's most likely an ISP issue, or the issue with the way Bigfoot software does the monitoring (edit: or maybe BFBC2 servers suck, try a different game?).

I also recommend doing the tweaking mentioned in my previous post. It does help most of the things Bigfoot's software fixes (no HUGE changes, though).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

buy one or get one and test for yourself against a UD5 rev 2.0. I stand by my results that strongly that i would be ok with you spending 500 bucks to find out that i was right.

---

Arrogant much? I don't think you bought the board yourself.
This was totally uncalled for. :rolleyes:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

[U][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/5895/22719777.png


There are two things that you should notice in the picture above. They are both circled in green:

---

What should be noticed about this? 233 iss high, but, not really interesting IMO... Dont get the hype about this.. If I am not mistaking, my UD3R does pretty much same, maybe 220 or 240... No big deal, means nothing for performance on Gulftown...
The ram frequency I dont get the point of showing... 1266 is hard for LGA1366 tri-chan, 1050 isnt.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

actually you are in luck i have a screenshot my UD5 rev 2.0 vantage results:
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/4...arkvantage.png

---

Please dont do that again...
I trust in you knowing exactly what I mean....
The only thing you are acheiving by doing so on XS is making it obvious for everyone that you are biased.

Apart from that;
Very dedicated review, keep them coming, but please, distinguish yourself just a little from the marketing material - your own thoughts is more appreciated then a commercial.

Marc your intelligence is out of this world, can you please elaborate what makes those screenshots bad again for us laymen to understand :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dinos22

Marc your intelligence is out of this world, can you please elaborate what makes those screenshots bad again for us laymen to understand :D

---

Ofcause Dino
Check the CPU score, and then again; look at the top10 submissions, valid.
No; Lets make it easier; just look at no#1 submission with 2x GTX570..

Now focus at the CPU score.

Using physx is UNACCEPTABLE, does not matter if your nickname is Lardarse, Dinos22, Sin0822, M.Beier, Massman or whats all ever.... It is NOT legit, and an easy way to deceive the none knowing.... It is marketing bullshift, and you know it - dont try to defend this....
I told you & James this in person as well back at GOOC, as I said it was so sad that a great media, TweakTown, did not kick Shane Baxtor off the crew for pulling that crap.

EDIT; Please, this was initially not a quote of anything you said, so if any further comment, do feel free to PM me, or contact me in another way - no need to do further off topic, I have faith in Sin0822 realizing that XS just isnt the place to do that.

i used physx in all my benchmark results to keep them constant, its not meant for comparison to your system but across my systems.

I understand it like this, disabling physx kills the cpu scores. So i kept phyx on for the pure reason that I had it on when i first did the X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 benchmarks, if i turned it off now i could not compare. I will though just for you turn it off when i do my future reviews and not compare to the X58A-UD5 if that makes you happy. It is more than obvious to everyone that physx is on, and i even stated physx is on. lol. i am not trying to fool anyone.

To be even MORE honest with you I DO NOT benchmark to score on HWBot i could care less to be honest none of what i do is worth submitting to HWBot for some stupid points. My benchmarking however is to compare across my platforms. Now if i uninstalled physx on my G1 assassin and then compared to the X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 with physx on that wouldn't be fair.

But for the X58A-OC board i expect some pretty nice scores coming up, so i am going to start turning physx off and using a tweaked OS. This means I will redo all the G1 Assassin scores.
Does that make you happy ? lol :)

FYI another reason i didn't uninstall physx is because this isn't the only site i post my reviews on, its actually only 1 where everyone competes with each other, i do like it though the most. A normal user, and believe me gamers are a much larger group than us, and they use 3dmark all the time, they don't turn physx off, so i did not.

You are offended i didn't run my system tweaked, aka i shouldn't have installed something i install on all my platforms. So when i game i should uninstall physx? lol that is all i am saying.

on the networking, i have no idea whats what but i do understand what you are saying, maybe its the way it records the ping, or the reason i took every 36th number, i couldn't have them all there.

What the NIC really did i saw and it reduced the amount that i lagged, i can shoot my sinper rifle at so many yards and hit the standing target while i am moving.

BTW i am always learning so your criticism are welcome, for the X58A-OC board review I want to make it so everyone can follow along so here is a list of things I will add:
#1 Turn physx off, go by hwbot rules
#2 Post up screenshots of my benchmarks runs in thumbnails followed by graphs.
#3 not bench the NIC lol

Anything else? i am very serious.

how does that make him biased Marc

he stated he used physx and he used it on both platforms to provide equivalent comparison, this is just a simple gaming board review, not an attempt at a W.R.. Using this for WR benching with OC board is unacceptable of course but this is not the case. What's more he is reviewing a board not GPUs mate come the :banana::banana::banana::banana: on!

looks like you are talking about of your arse again boy :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

i used physx in all my benchmark results to keep them constant, its not meant for comparison to your system but across my systems.

I understand it like this, disabling physx kills the cpu scores. So i kept phyx on for the pure reason that I had it on when i first did the X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 benchmarks, if i turned it off now i could not compare. I will though just for you turn it off when i do my future reviews and not compare to the X58A-UD5 if that makes you happy. It is more than obvious to everyone that physx is on, and i even stated physx is on. lol. i am not trying to fool anyone.

To be even MORE honest with you I DO NOT benchmark to score on HWBot i could care less to be honest none of what i do is worth submitting to HWBot for some stupid points. My benchmarking however is to compare across my platforms. Now if i uninstalled physx on my G1 assassin and then compared to the X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 with physx on that wouldn't be fair.

---

To be fair;
No I did not read your previous reviews.
But the purpose of CPU score is that it actually is CPU score, not graphics score - which physx makes it - so no, enabling is actually killing the CPU score.

A few reviewers tend using this, and for the common man, higher is better, so yes, works fine for marketing, but, for the knowing it is simply just considered cheating.
Therefor, please just take it as a friendly advice for future, physx is not appreciated, for me, and likely majority of the users on XS - because it is simply ruining the purpose of the test.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dinos22

how does that make him biased Marc

he stated he used physx and he used it on both platforms to provide equivalent comparison

looks like you are talking about of your arse again boy :D

---

Last time you wrote that, you admitted being wrong by say "I was just joking", remember? Cut the bull.
It is biased, because "bigger is better", but it does not apply in all cases, it is simply just cheating in the benchmark - If you want it legit, write a letter to futuremark, I couldnt care less if you consider it legit for review purpose.

Hence; It is a marketing trick, and not one that works on XS.

have you got some imaginary friend Dino you want to share with the public :D

i have seen it work on XS before when the initial SB reviews popped up and that is why i used it on in my SB review. I shall take your advise :) no hard feelings M. Beier :)

BTW is that your GF in the pic?

Zalbard- I didn't mean to come off like a jackass, but I purchased my X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 for $300 at the time from my Microcenter. it was my first GB ever and that is why I started reviewing. i apologize if I came off as arrogant, my sincerest apologies.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dinos22

have you got some imaginary friend Dino you want to share with the public :D

---

X58A-OC pricing ring a bell? Dude, just lay off, it is a stupid argue, you know it and so do I.

I am pointing out something that Sin0822 is likely to adapt, deep down inside, you know that I like Gigabyte motherboards an awful lot, hence; why it has been my favorite brand since post X48/P45 - Creditability is very important, and I think Sin0822 is doing a fantastic job on his enthuciasm, in fact so well that I directly asked your colleague over a beer, if he(Sin0822, whom I called Sin0812) is on the payroll :D (He is not, was the response)
It is a small detail but for some an important one, and if that some only is me, then be it so, I still got the right to express my opinion ;) (And dont think I am alone on this one though)
I am not a semi-god or anything, however, I have my logic, and it is not the grand purpose of hurting Gigabyte Motherboards (as you make it sound, especially when talking with colleagues), nor was it back with the H55N contest when I informed that it is risky to put too much PR spotlight on Sam/TaPaKa, as he does not want it, and sometimes capable of spinning on a plate.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

BTW is that your GF in the pic?

---

Depends on which hour a day you ask! :rofl:
Nah just kidding, yes, that is my better looking half.

EDIT;
Yea, I know when it is being used; and I pinpoint it every single time, others are giving up.... Unfortunately WWM does it too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by M.Beier

Depends on which hour a day you ask! :rofl:

---

Marc's internet GFs :D

Very pretty girl, congrats man.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

Thank Ed i really appreciate it!

---

Anytime man, I always look forward to your reviews - they are amazing!

Wow, sorry to see all this flak you are getting here! It's just a review guys, not for points, no need to bring so much hassle into the discussion.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

Hey Silver, nice to have you here. LSD is a great guy, his reviews are pretty damn great, his knowledge of RAM and SSDs far surpasses mine.

LSD- thanks for sending him over :)

---

Thanks man, your reviews are top notch too! I only hope that someday I can create my own style of motherboard reviews that keep up with my memory ones, I have much to learn from you it looks like :D

I knew your review would help him out plenty, and I linked him to your previous one as well. I was trying to help him decide between this or the OC board, but I think he is leaning on this one more.

It's a tough one for many to decide, not me though - I can easily tell which board has what I am looking for :yepp:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silver420

Hey up :)

Yeh i love his reviews too and boy has he helped me out with the tons of questions ive thrown his way since ive been chatting to him.

As LSD knows i was hesitant about purchasing the new G1 until i had found a decent review, so thanks again! :D

Silver

---

Thanks Silver, I'm glad you enjoy my reviews as well. I have a lot to learn in the motherboard review department though, but hopefully someday I will be able to write a motherboard article with as much style as Sin does.

I still say OC, but that's me :up: :D

sin0822,
latest AIDA64 beta 1.60.1321,supose to support G1.Assassin board and clear your PM.....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

Zalbard- I didn't mean to come off like a jackass, but I purchased my X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 for $300 at the time from my Microcenter. it was my first GB ever and that is why I started reviewing. i apologize if I came off as arrogant, my sincerest apologies.

---

It's OK, man. :yepp:
NIC testing is a b*tch, so many settings that can affect performance and tons of things that can go south (not to mention that recreating the same situation can be nearly impossible just due to the fact that you're not only testing your own rig but a bunch of others and miles of copper, and that's not by choice) Your data can be still valid to a degree, I just don't think it represents what it's supposed to. :p: Just keep in mind the stuff I mentioned, perhaps.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by stasio

sin0822,
latest AIDA64 beta 1.60.1321,supose to support G1.Assassin board and clear your PM.....

---

cool thanks for the update dude :up:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zalbard

It's OK, man. :yepp:
NIC testing is a b*tch, so many settings that can affect performance and tons of things that can go south (not to mention that recreating the same situation can be nearly impossible just due to the fact that you're not only testing your own rig but a bunch of others and miles of copper, and that's not by choice) Your data can be still valid to a degree, I just don't think it represents what it's supposed to. :p: Just keep in mind the stuff I mentioned, perhaps.

---

Will do and the thing is my results are just a sample, i do see what you mean about the extremes.

Stasio thanks man, and yes PM box cleared. Glad i could help. I will test it out later today.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lsdmeasap

Thanks Silver, I'm glad you enjoy my reviews as well. I have a lot to learn in the motherboard review department though, but hopefully someday I will be able to write a motherboard article with as much style as Sin does.

I still say OC, but that's me :up: :D

---

Now now, we all know your very critical of your own reviews. We all know they are top class too! :up:

Edit: I will prob wait for the review of the OC board, though i stand by the fact that if both overclock well (im not using extreme cooling after all) then the G1 will have more to offer, albeit it costs more.

Well listen silver, if you like to have a lot of connectivity, and you are going to buy a sound card and want good gaming experience then id say the g1 assassin is the board for you. If on the other hand you just OC and use your computer for things like benchmarking and surfing the internet now and then on it then the OC board is for you. If you have no idea how to OC then the 4g button on the OC board can be usful of course 4ghz isn't hard to do yourself.

The G1 Assassin really is a great solid board, of course you need to buy a board which you like the features and performance of as well as the look if you are going to be looking at it.

Great job as always Steve. Not a board that I would ever buy personally but for someone that is looking at a sound card as well it could be an option.

Come on Beier, tons of people use PhysX in reviews, this isnt hwbot. I use it in all my reviews because a general user would be using it as well so the comparos would be valid for a larger audience.

I dont like this whole "one board is designed for gaming" and one is for "oc-ing"

Who games but doesnt overclock? lol

Hence why i think the G1 is the winner, as it will still overclock well yet has the extra features for gaming :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Silver420

I dont like this whole "one board is designed for gaming" and one is for "oc-ing"

Who games but doesnt overclock? lol

Hence why i think the G1 is the winner, as it will still overclock well yet has the extra features for gaming :D

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I overclock, but don't game so to me, less is more in terms of the X58A OC

Silver you can do both with either board, but they are meant to be on the extreme sides of the spectrum as Giga doesn't put gamers and ocers int eh same category. The G1 has more features for gamers and the OC board more for the extreme ocer, either will benefit you well :)

BIOS F3d is out.

i am guessing only thing new is 3+TB HDD support?