# Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 Intel Z77 Express



## cadaveca (Apr 27, 2012)

Gigabyte's first G1.Killer Intel Z77 Express product takes a completely new slant on enthusiast gaming products, shrinking down to a mATX form factor, as was widely requested by end users. The G1.Sniper M3 is a gaming soldier that's ready for battle, equipped with some of the latest and greatest technology, including a Creative Recon3Di audio CODEC, and Intel LAN controller that supports CFOS traffic shaping technology.

*Show full review*


----------



## joyman (Jul 13, 2012)

Great review as always Dave, I wonder which audio did you like more - this or Z77XE4's. Does Realtek closing the gap with Creative ?


----------



## cadaveca (Jul 13, 2012)

AI AI AI, such subjective questions!

Honestly, the audio, for me, is better on the Biostar, because I find the input side(line-level) to be better, and I record a fair bit of audio on my PC. At the same time, many Realtek audio chips are paired with Creative software, and with good circuit design, either can be great, or with a bad circuit, horrible!


I find the Creative hardware a bit better overall for 3D positioning, and it seems to be more "game-friendly". The high-end is very crisp on the G1.Sniper M3, so when online gaming and chatting with people on TeamSpeak, for example, everything comes through very clearly with my own audio gear setup.


The G1.Sniper is very much a gamer-oriented product, and mainly for single-GPU users. This board, 3770K, set of G.Skill Sniper ram, GTX670, and a PCIe SSD would make for a killer mATX lan box!


----------



## fullinfusion (Jul 13, 2012)

Great review Dave.


----------



## nickbaldwin86 (Jul 13, 2012)

So let me know when the Gigabyte G1.Sniper I3 LGA 1155 (m-ITX) comes out. 

mATX is meh, you shrink it down but just not enough to really get compact enough for me to build a SFF PC.


----------



## Frizz (Jul 13, 2012)

not that impressed with the board lately, as you said Cadaveca the vcore required for OCing is a big turn off and my board just randomly has it's BIOS corrupt itself at random times even with the update. It's also happened to a build I was doing for a customer with the same board so I know it's not just me lol.


----------



## fullinfusion (Jul 14, 2012)

You were saying Dave, you needed more voltage to get your 4.6GHz clock compared to other mobo's.

Any chance the cpu has begun it's degradation?


----------



## cadaveca (Jul 14, 2012)

fullinfusion said:


> You were saying Dave, you needed more voltage to get your 4.6GHz clock compared to other mobo's.
> 
> Any chance the cpu has begun it's degradation?



Nope, checked other already-tested boards, 1.2 V or less with them _AFTER testing this board_. Perhaps VRM refresh rate is at fault...which can be remedied with VRM tweaks in the 3D Power section, if you're so inclined.


----------



## Hayder_Master (Jul 14, 2012)

awesome review dave


----------



## fullinfusion (Jul 14, 2012)

cadaveca said:


> Nope, checked other already-tested boards, 1.2 V or less with them _AFTER testing this board_. Perhaps VRM refresh rate is at fault...which can be remedied with VRM tweaks in the 3D Power section, if you're so inclined.


Thanks Dave! By the way, what 3D settings are you talking about? Power Management?


----------



## cadaveca (Jul 14, 2012)

fullinfusion said:


> Thanks Dave! By the way, what 3D settings are you talking about? Power Management?



Gigabyte calls the CPU VRM controls "3DPower".


----------



## fullinfusion (Jul 14, 2012)

cadaveca said:


> Gigabyte calls the CPU VRM controls "3DPower".


Cool and thanks.

What setting did that board need vs your other mobo's?


----------



## INSTG8R (Jul 14, 2012)

Nice to see a Gigabyte "high end" board not covered in guns and bullets. They may have moved away from their "Rainbow Colours" but the Sniper Series have been just as tacky.

Great revue Dave but shame on you for spelling colour wrong


----------



## fullinfusion (Jul 14, 2012)

INSTG8R said:


> Nice to see a Gigabyte "high end" board not covered in guns and bullets. They may have moved away from their "Rainbow Colours" but the Sniper Series have been just as tacky.
> 
> Great revue Dave but shame on you for spelling colour wrong


He's only human and not a Terminator, yeah Dave smarten up lol!

It's a small board and is why I'm thinking it's lacking the gay bullets and shit


----------



## INSTG8R (Jul 14, 2012)

fullinfusion said:


> He's only human and not a Terminator, yeah Dave smarten up lol!
> 
> It's a small board and is why I'm thinking it's lacking the gay bullets and shit



Yeah I have to think it was only because the board is mATX there wasn't any room for "bullet treatment"


----------



## LAN_deRf_HA (Jul 14, 2012)

My feeling with the core3d chips will never be a positive one. I was looking forward to the updates of the sniper/assassins or w/e without the gunsinks, but then I saw they downgraded the audio. I'd rather have the decent realtek solution in the biostar than this. Daniel_k sums it up http://forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=697046&page=2&p=532625&viewfull=1#post532625


----------



## INSTG8R (Jul 14, 2012)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> My feeling with the core3d chips will never be a positive one. I was looking forward to the updates of the sniper/assassins or w/e without the gunsinks, but then I saw they downgraded the audio. I'd rather have the decent realtek solution in the biostar than this. Daniel_k sums it up http://forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=697046&page=2&p=532625&viewfull=1#post532625



Yeah it has been pretty obvious the Recon 3D and it's onboard solution is a pretty dumbed down chip compared to the previous X-Fi chips. They have clearly taken the easy way out and just simplified down to the point of it not being much better than an onboard solution.


----------



## cadaveca (Jul 14, 2012)

fullinfusion said:


> Cool and thanks.
> 
> What setting did that board need vs your other mobo's?



I did not adjust it, and left it on auto. In fact, other than vDIMM, vIMC, and vCPU, I do not change anything in BIOS, other than enabling XMP and adjsuting multis. This is in part becuase of how I measure VRM power consumption, and secondly because I want to show just how really easy it is to clock IVB. vDIMM and vIMC should be taken care of by XMP settings, but many many boards do not adjust vIMC even if XMP profile dictates such a change, so I manually set them anyway, and the vCPU change is pretty obvious, of course. It also gives me a good idea of just how mature the BIOS is, to measure other changes and see how the boards react differently on auto settings. The more the OEM does for the end user automatically, the better, IMHO. We pay big bucks for PCs, so ease of use is a priority for that expense for many.



INSTG8R said:


> Nice to see a Gigabyte "high end" board not covered in guns and bullets. They may have moved away from their "Rainbow Colours" but the Sniper Series have been just as tacky.
> 
> Great revue Dave but shame on you for spelling colour wrong



I think Gigabyte has listened to user feedback about heatsink design, nevermind that's why we have a mATX Sniper, as users demanded it. Perhaps we will see a mITX board in the future too... 




fullinfusion said:


> He's only human and not a Terminator, yeah Dave smarten up lol!
> 
> It's a small board and is why I'm thinking it's lacking the gay bullets and shit



See above. 



LAN_deRf_HA said:


> My feeling with the core3d chips will never be a positive one. I was looking forward to the updates of the sniper/assassins or w/e without the gunsinks, but then I saw they downgraded the audio. I'd rather have the decent realtek solution in the biostar than this. Daniel_k sums it up http://forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=697046&page=2&p=532625&viewfull=1#post532625





INSTG8R said:


> Yeah it has been pretty obvious the Recon 3D and it's onboard solution is a pretty dumbed down chip compared to the previous X-Fi chips. They have clearly taken the easy way out and just simplified down to the point of it not being much better than an onboard solution.



I don't fully agree with Daniel_K's stance. He is a bit biased against Creative anyway, simply becuase he makes alternative drivers for audio products. He does to a lot for the enthusiast community, and he does touch on very valid "pros", but many of his listed "cons" are just nit-picking in my opinion, since he doesn't have the actual hardware at the time that post was made...he might now.

I use what many would consider high-end audio daily, and I must say, I really prefer the Recon3D chips that as all I've tested so far have been butloads ahead of X-Fi solutions to my ears. Daniel_K's posts admits that 3D positioning is better with these new chips, and what truly matters to most users is the actual quality of the audio, which can be greatly influenced with circuit design. Many other add-in solutions offer the option to swap out OpAmps for just this same reason. 

Dont get me wrong though, overall I generally agree with that there post of his, but I think he's a bit too focused on shortcomings for overall audio design, when it might be better to have a simplified, more gamer-oriented DSP, which he does say it kind of is, anyway. And he does say that his opinion was based on looknig at the software, too, anyway.

The big thing to me is that is does offer very decent audio for gaming and music playback, while 3D positioning is better than it has ever been, but yes, the recording side of the chip is a bit lacking. One of the X-Fi's strengths was MIDI/ASIO latency, but since more users that will end up with the Recon3D products won't really use those functions anyway, it's not that big of a deal that they are gone.


----------



## INSTG8R (Jul 14, 2012)

Thanks for your opinion on the Recon. I will run my Fatality as long as I can. I bought it on release and it has served me well and is a great card. The fact that the PCI slot is disappearing would be the only reason I would have to give it up


----------



## Dimi (Jul 14, 2012)

Is there any reason to go for this board instead of the Asus Gene V if they are priced almost identical?

Looking at performance/power management i don't see it. Unless you are a Gigabyte fan.


----------



## cadaveca (Jul 14, 2012)

Dimi said:


> Is there any reason to go for this board instead of the Asus Gene V if they are priced almost identical?
> 
> Looking at performance/power management i don't see it. Unless you are a Gigabyte fan.



The slot arrangement is one, obviously. If you wanted to use two dual-slot VGAs and a PCIe SSD(or other PCIe-based devices like a RAID card or audio card/TV Tuner), you cannot with the Maximus V Gene.


----------



## joyman (Jul 15, 2012)

I think board manufacturers are milking the cow strong lately. Mainstream products are going to be new low end and top boards are as expensive as some cheap used cars. It is almost ridiculous if it wasn't bad for us... So I have to give 200+ euro just to buy some board that can overclock good... And I remember the time of my socket A EpoX 8RDA3+ and AM2 EpoX MF4J Ultra... well nowadays this is nearly impossible. And they say there is competition... yeah right.


----------



## dsdsdk (Jul 20, 2012)

Hola Dave/TPU,

A little constructive criticism.

The review includes results from a P8P67 Pro, which was done using a 2600K. This review is done with a 3770K, which makes it incomparable on a board perspective. ie. the user is lead to believe the Z77 outperforms the P67 by a lot, when the actual difference is in the cpus. 

May I suggest you either take out the P8P67 (and other boards that were tested with slower cpu) or retest boards with 3770K (yeah it's a lot of work..).

Alternatively you could link to a 2600K vs 3770K test and point out the performance difference percentage in the review.

On another note. A special on P67 vs Z77, both with 3770K would be really cool. See how much chipset actually affects performance.


----------



## cadaveca (Jul 20, 2012)

dsdsdk said:


> Hola Dave/TPU,
> 
> A little constructive criticism.
> 
> ...



Valid concerns, for sure. I will be doing a re-bench of quite a few products in the near future with a new VGA or three, and at this time I will be updating numbers on some older boards.

However, because in reality Z77 replaces P67/Z68, I won't be including numbers with p67-based products, as features are quite different. First of all, there's the PCIe functionality difference(2.0 vs 3.0), never mind the platform-specfic ones. To offset this, I'll probably only include Z68 results, with a PCIe 3.0-compliant board.


The P8P67 Pro reivew I posted nearly 14 months ago, and no longer have it in my possesion. I've donated nearly all my P67 gear(including 2600K). I'd have about 40 boards if I kept them all, and I just don't have space for that.

I do understand why you'd want that compare, however.  Unfortunately, I do not do CPU reviews at this time.


----------



## dsdsdk (Jul 21, 2012)

Cool. Looking forward to the re-bench! 

Well, the compare between P67/Z68 and Z77 would be to see what the new boards bring to the table in terms of performance. Since they're all S1155 based and both support the latest gen. intel cpus.


----------



## cadaveca (Jul 21, 2012)

dsdsdk said:


> Cool. Looking forward to the re-bench!
> 
> Well, the compare between P67/Z68 and Z77 would be to see what the new boards bring to the table in terms of performance. Since they're all S1155 based and both support the latest gen. intel cpus.



Those differences won't be really be much of anything, since CPU/IMC/iGPU are all on the chip itself. Just drive controller differnces are really there, and I already include that in my reviews anyway.  The rest of any difference can be found from any board, since they all use different external controllers for things like USB 3.0/Firewire/Audio. Clearly though, with a new VGA, a re-bench is in order, so I'm going to have to do it anyway. My drive resutl graphs are ENORMOUS at this point.

the other difference, of course, is that Z77 has some extra memory dividers, but again, that's a CPU thing, not really board-related per-se, evne though that ability is tied into the PCH. There's really not much different between Z68 and Z77, except PCIe 3.0, and add-on features like Rapid Start and Smart Connect.

All that said, I'll have Z68 included in the re-bench, for sure.


----------



## borschwanger (Sep 21, 2012)

so i was basically all set to get the maximus v gene with this in second place.  i can combo the m3 with a 3570k for $263 after $20 MIR.  best ive seen 3570k + gene is $373 (would be 340 if i could get it online without tax).  is the gene worth the difference there considering you didnt even give a recommendation to the sniper?


----------



## cadaveca (Sep 21, 2012)

borschwanger said:


> so i was basically all set to get the maximus v gene with this in second place.  i can combo the m3 with a 3570k for $263 after $20 MIR.  best ive seen 3570k + gene is $373 (would be 340 if i could get it online without tax).  is the gene worth the difference there considering you didnt even give a recommendation to the sniper?



The major reason for the lack of a recommendation here for the G1.Sniper M3 is due to the lack of proper PCIe spacing. You cannot use proper Crossfire or SLi in a mATX case, and this is a mATX gaming product. That was a big mistake on Gigabyte's part, and it affected the final score in a big way.


In that regard, the Gene is better.

Is that worth $100 to you?

For me, a multi-GPU user, yes, the cost is worh it, but if you are going to use a single card, I can see no reason for the extra expense.



Gigabyte has a tonne of really really good Z77 Express products, and I'm not sure what happened with this one. It's not that there is anything really wrong with it...other than that PCIe spacing, and the heat that will be cuased by the use of a 4-pin CPU plug rather than an 8pin. That 4-pin choice won't affect overclocking ability though.


----------

