GIGABYTE G1 Assassin Physical Review*** In depth!

[bartman1973]

Wow good for you ... I borrowed a G1 and seems like I can only touch it end of february

I love the way you did the unboxing a detailed stuff ... Good Job !

[sin0822]

Thanks man, much appreciated

[saaya]

awesome review!
its a bit weird how you speak about gamers though... claiming to KNOW what they want... but not being one? :P

[sin0822]

LOL i play some games... modestly, COD, BF2, MOD, AOE2 you know...'

Thanks saaya

[xarot]

This board theme looks like 790i Ultra Amazing looking board.

[Postmodum]

Great review! Looking forward to OC results
And i really hope that Gigabyte will turn the black pcb mainstream P67 UD7, now this ... X58A-OC ... they just change the detail colors what is good

As for the board itself ... hardcore gamers will enjoy it more than i do ... i like the color scheme, although green is not one of my top colors ... but the heat sinks are a little too much imo ... very nice crafted but the magazine and the bullet is a little over the top

[dinos22]

it overclocks good, i push a few settings to 4.67Ghz on my 980X on Corsair H70 water. Not the greatest overclocker this chip but not too bad either, board was rock solid, vcore fluctuation was minimal as well, no weird OC behaviour, didn't mind 12GB ram either with 4GB sticks on the F2 bios

showing off my (lack of) gaming skillz in the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JEv8VEJ-6w&hd=1

[sin0822]

i pushed 4.5ghz on my i7930 on air, but my UD5 did the same, i am blck limited on my CPU since my UD5 and R3E and P6X58D-P could only push 215-220 blck and this board acts teh exact same way, so i know its my chip. Maybe i will get a new nicer chip very soon.

Anyways I loved the video dino, your gaming skills.... i am not going to comment(b/c my gaming skill suck), at least you beat teh level hahahahaha

BTW i tried that ASIO test it worked perfectly, and its annoying too, sine wave pink noise white noise sweep sound all good lo..

[kirbster1966]

I picked up an i7 950 for this board. Now i just need to find a suitable case which can take this beast!
Likely gonna end up with a HAF-X as that is the easiest to find XL-ATX board...hopefully i get my board Friday...c'mon Friday.....looking forward to tring out the high end audio and NIC.

[dinos22]

are you the guy from Hard Forum kirb? Who do you review for, hard? looking forward to your writeup

[kirbster1966]

I am kirbster from Hardforum. GBT USA has been supporting me since last year when i placed 3rd in the p55 OC challenge. I was originally invited to the GOOC in LA but LN2 is a bit over my head right now (and out of my budget!). Since then they send me stuff for review from time to time.

Maybe next year...
I have been a HARDforum member for almost 11 years. That is where i started my hardware addiction. My first hardcore overclock was a cleron 400@ 672Mhz under a watercooled cascade of three TEC's. That was a long time ago. Since air cooling has gotten so efficient i havent played around much other than a bit of water cooling from time to time. I see you spend a lot of time here (16,663 posts!!!!!).

[dinos22]

i'm everywhere

[Utnorris]

I like the board, looks great, especially since it isn't red and black. I personally think it's late to the game being a x58 board and not a P67 board, but I guess the extra PCIe lanes are better suited for SLI and Xfire. The pricing seems a little steep, but it has enough unique features to justify it I suppose. Considering the cost of a separate audio card and the NIC card added to the normal price of a x58 board and you would be in the same range. I am surprised it didn't include a NF200 chip, but there shouldn't be much difference, if at all, between x16, x8, x8 and x16, x16, x16.

[saaya]

LOL i play some games... modestly, COD, BF2, MOD, AOE2 you know...'

Thanks saaya

well thats what I thought... so you are a "gamer" then why do you talk about "games" in third person?
That kinda confused me...
Sounds like you don't know anything about games but know what they want which is weird

[Raja@ASUS]

Oh, not again


Other just use VLTR/CHIL/UPI solutions and have no problems and without any need of tons of phases

And you did phase calculations not exactly correct.




And system loadline is not an equation or style, it's kind of loss compensation tech, because at hundreds of amps ohmic resistance of planes can play noticeable role in overrall VRM performance.

You are right.

To clear up the memory power misnomer, almost all DRAM power consumption comes from VDDQ - the differential Tx/Rx pairs on either side of the bus.


As for the onboard audio stuff, it is better than normal BUT when it comes to opamps - 150r or 200r output impedance is nothing special - there are plenty of opamps that can drive down to 32 ohms. I'm not knocking it entirely, the complete solution is better than what we're used to when it comes to onboard sound, however, there's a balance between dedicated soundcard costs and ramping the cost of a motherboard. Those with low impedance phones that want them driven well, will veer towards getting a dedicated soundcard regardless, otherwise low-end response is going to be limited.

[Leeghoofd]

i'm everywhere

That's the most scary post this year !!

Massman is still awaiting his limited edition Pink OC board version Dino :p Gonna try to get a guerilla board for review...

[Calathea]

Don't like the board but the writing is very, very good.

[sin0822]

Sayaa- lol I only play games maybe once every week or so.

Calathea- thank you.
Leegfoofd- lol pink oc board.

[Raja@ASUS]

Above in red in another ISL6322G two phase PWM with integrated drivers for the RAM. In the blue is the rest of the VRM, far away from its PWM. RAM also requires very little voltage, in fact a portion of the power for DDR3 called vddq comes from the UNCORE part of the processor. Intel defines VDDQ as "Processor I/O supply voltage for DDR3" with a vabsolute about of 1.875 and vmax or 1.575, with 6amps.

Anything VDDQ related (I/O voltage) is all supplied from VDIMM - think about it carefully and you'll understand why.

[sin0822]

thanks

[Raja@ASUS]

yes i understand, but the intel spec for i7 900 series CPUs states that vddq comes from the processor, no? table 2-11.

Thats the power consumed by the I/O pairs for the DRAM bus not power "supplied" by the Uncore itself. In the same way that the CPU does not supply VCC or VTT but consumes it from the rails.

[Raja@ASUS]

Don't feel that Tin is prodding you for no reason. He just wants the tech stuff to be accurate is all. Better to leave that stuff out if you're not sure, or run it by someone that knows before posting Sin. Doing stuff wrong creates more problems than it solves.

[sin0822]

well i disagree i read the Intel sheet, but i will change it. No matter what i ever say there will always be proponents from the other side.

BTW i tested out a few features of the board, the Bigfoot NIC is pretty cool, has a nice little app. The Audio is fantastic. The OC boost button provides a 7mhz boost to your BLCK. LLC is dead solid on this board, the BIOS is just like other X58A board's BIOSes, very solid and easy to work with. One of my favorite parts is the temperature and fan monitoring, you have smart fan control for all 5fan ports as well:

yes i get it now, that was a lot of power for the CPU to feed teh RAM, and at first glance that is what it looks like. But Intel's label of VDDQ as "processor I/O supply for" you should take it up with them.

[Raja@ASUS]

well i disagree i read the Intel sheet, but i will change it.

I think you just need to understand the context in which that statement is made.

Think about reference voltages and also about the DC levels available to the CPU to use for I/O.

[sin0822]

gotcha thanks