Overclocking

Overclocking with the Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 was very easy, although I was surprised to find that in order to get my CPU stable at the same 4.6 GHz that the other tested boards have done, I needed to boost the voltage all the way up to 1.25 V before it would pass stability testing. I didn't run into any issues when clocking the memory, however. I did monitor power consumption when overclocked, and the Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 did draw about 10 W more than any of the other boards, including the previously tested Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H. I was disappointed by this, as I did expect to find very similar clocking between the two Gigabyte products, and while frequencies were matched, needed voltage and power consumption was not. I have not been able to pinpoint anything out of place that explains why this difference exists, and have resigned myself to the fact that it is most likely due to the differing VRM implementation (ie 4-pin EPS).

Overclocked Performance Summary

I saw earlier in the "stock clock" testing that CPU performance was really good with the Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3, and when overclocked, the same is still true, with the G1.Sniper M3 also posting the second best result here.


SuperPi, of course is much more memory-focused, and here the G1.Sniper's results are a bit underwhelming, to say the least, but at the same time, they aren't that far behind the other results.


Again, in wPrime, the high CPU performance pays off, and we've got the best result again achieved by the G1.Sniper M3. Nice job, Gigabyte!


F1 2010 is a bit more memory focused, and here, we once again saw negative performance scaling when overclocked. The ECS Z77H2-AX also exhibited this behavior, so there must be something within the platform itself that causes this to happen. This behavior with Intel Z77 Express is very nearly the first instance I've seen overclocking negatively impact performance that wasn't connected to instability issues, but with it occuring so often with Intel's Z77 Express, there must be some other explanation.


Shogun 2, on the other hand, is a mix of CPU and memory performance, and here again the G1.Sniper M3 fails to impress, although it's not really all that far off of its brother, the Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H. The numbers are a bit low, but nothing that is unexpected, considering the other results.