There's not really much we can say about the Gigabyte G1.Sniper2. As a gaming motherboard, there's absolutely nothing missing feature-wise, and the gaming performance has yet to be matched by any other product. The inclusion of the onboard Killer NIC and X-Fi means that worrying about airflow because every expansion slot is full is just never going to happen. Not only is the Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 the top performer now, but when Ivy Bridge CPUs and new PCIe 3.0 graphics card come out in the future, it's ready and waiting to give everything every gamer dreams about getting out of a motherboard.
It not only performs superbly, it is also one of the best Intel Z68 products for power consumption, too. It's a bit disappointing that we ran into so many issues when overclocking, but at the same time it's not that big of a deal, considering that a Sandy Bridge 2600K at stock performance is near enough for just about any game out there, and the "Quick Boost" feature and button contained within the 5.25-inch bay device makes a quick jump up to 4200 MHz so easy it's almost scary. The G1.Sniper2 is currently the most expensive Sandy Bridge motherboard, there are many boards for much less that offer very similar features, and although those other boards may not have onboard devices of the same quality, when it comes to the Sandy Bridge platform it's quite possible to build a much more affordable system that performs just as well, with a board that costs far less than half what the G1.Sniper2 does. However, considering the cost of a Creative X-Fi and a BigFoot KillerNIC, the G1.Sniper2's price actually ends up being justified, although that may be hard to accept without having the board in your hands.
This is one quality-heavy motherboard; even with all the cooling removed the G1.Sniper2 easily physically weighs twice as much as some of the other boards we've tested. For those not willing to compromise on parts in the search for ultimate performance, this is THE board to get. We've deducted from the score for the weird XMP/memory situation, and issues we ran into getting things up and running, but with a new BIOS this board could really be Gaming Perfection.