Monday, June 24, 2013

G1.Sniper 5 has Best Audio SNR out of 33 8 Series Motherboards Tested

 

 

Not sure if this was posted earlier or not, but Hardware.info at the beginning of this month posted their review of over 33 different 8 series motherboards: “33 Haswell motherboard group test: 26x Z87, 4x H87 and 3x B8. Besides the fact that not one, but two GIGABYTE motherboards ended up getting the gold award (the Z87X-OC and G1.Sniper 5), I noticed something very interesting in the audio testing section. Out of all the boards tested, the Sniper 5 had the best dB(A) rating of 96.4. The next closest board came in at 92.3dB(A).

We use the loopback test in Rightmark Audio Analyzer, and connect the input to the output of the onboard soundcard. First we look at the signal-to-noise ratio, and Gigabyte convincingly takes the crown with its G1.Sniper 5 motherboard and the Creative Sound Core3D chip. It's expensive, but you get what you pay for.

It’s nice to see the audio features we put on our gaming boards really do deliver the best onboard audio experience. As they didn’t test the G1.Sniper M5 it would be interesting to see how that board would fair in terms of audio since it shares the same audio features as it’s big brother. I can’t really blame them though, since testing 33 motherboards for launch time must have been crazy.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

GIGABYTE Extreme OC Workshop under way in Australia, wrestling crocodiles, riding kangaroos and breaking some world records at OCAU Meet 2013!

TeamAU, GIGABYTE and Corsair have joined forced to show off the latest Intel Z87 platform to some of the best overclockers in Australia. They’ve joined the yearly OCAU HWBOT team gathering up in Cairns, Far North Queensland.

Cairns is in tropical part of Australia so even though it’s currently winter over there, the boys are wearing shorts and hitting the swimming pool. TeamAU is helping cool the climate however with ridiculous amounts of LN2 being used at the moment lol.

Here are a few photos from the event which is currently under way.

Lovely weather up in Cairns994777_284857321658080_633521666_n

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Star of the show today

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Crazy LN2 tanks are crazy Open-mouthed smile

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Competition is under way as well. TeamAU SniperOz Corsair team vs TeamAU dinos22 GIGABYTE team.

TeamAU dinos22 GIGABYTE is in the lead at the moment in the low clock challenge 5.5GHz with the new Intel XTU benchmark with the new world record as well at 1377 marks!

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TeamAU dinos22 GIGABYTE team                         vs               TeamAU SniperOz Corsair team battling

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Youngpro from TeamAU doing some subzero RAM testing

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Friday, June 21, 2013

Dinos22 explains GIGABYTE’s OC Touch features on new Z87X-OC board!

OC Touch features are plentiful on the new range of GIGABYTE Z87 OC boards, particularly the Z87X-OC to a point they can be a bit overwhelming which is why this video by dinos22 will come in handy for anyone looking for some more information on how to use all the features properly.

Happy viewing!

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Wanna get up to speed on Haswell? Try the GIGABYTE Z87 OC Guide

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Overclocking guru Sin0822 has just posted his Z87/Haswell guide on Overclock.net. It’s a top to bottom look at the new Intel platform from a strictly overclocking perspective. Sin has included a detailed look at how to push your new 4770k or 4670K processors, with tons of advice about voltages, memory and base clock tweaking, plus some easy templates that can help any noob get a handle on Haswell.

Check out the guide on Overclock.net here.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Video Review: GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M5 gets Gold on Overclock3D.net

Our buddy Tiny ‘Tom ‘ Logan has published his full and extensive video review of our latest micro-ATX gaming board, the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M5, and one thing is abundantly clear… he rates it highly. Enough to award his Gold award!

As you’d expect from Tom, he takes a serious look at the motherboard from the perspective of a gamer and overclocker. Perhaps most interestingly however, Tom, being a case modding guru of epic proportions, also pays lots of attention to the aesthetics of the board including our LED trace lighting path around the audio section of the board.

 

You can also catch the written review here on OC3D.net

Monday, June 17, 2013

Ninjalane visits GIGABYTE HQ OC Lab, photo heavy!

Computex this year was probably one of the busiest ones on the calendar as far as overclockers were concerned. There was a record number of well known overclockers going to Taiwan this year from all over the globe and inevitably many ended up visiting the manufacturers.

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GIGABYTE was no exception here and opened up its doors to a large group of overclockers on the weekend following Computex. GIGABYTE is a pretty laid back sort of company, almost like your typical Aussie sitting under the shade on a hot 40C day I’d say. There was no rules, agenda, expectation or anything of sorts. It was just a day of socialising, having some fun, downing a few beers & redbulls and catching up with old friends and meeting some new ones.

Dennis from Ninjalane was one of the guests and he took a fair amount of photos, I’ll put up a few but for the full report you should jump to Ninjalane website!

Few guys having a crack at 7GHz with a 4770K

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Someone even pulled out the new AMD CPU, why not!

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Gamer from Belgium realises he bought the world’s worst retail 4770K!

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Apparently GIGABYTE offices look the same as everywhere else (plus the plants!)

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11592Roman (der8auer) and Pieter (massman) capturing some gold by breaking

both wprime records on the new Haswell platform.

Fastest 4770K 1024M wprime link & fastest 4770K 32M wprime link

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It was great seeing you all guys and hope to do this sort of thing again next year!

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Video: Sin0822 Unboxes and Reviews the GIGABYTE Z87X-OC motherboard

Motherboard expert and OC enthusiast Sin0822 has just uploaded his latest video, an unboxing and review of one of our newly unveiled OC boards, the GIGABYTE Z87X-OC. Sin shows us the full retail package, but as you expect he also gives us a very detailed and well informed view of a pretty complex piece of kit. Sin examines pretty much every IC on the board as well some really good explanations of some of our more esoteric features that may initially bewilder those of you less familiar with overclocking.

 

Saturday, June 8, 2013

TeamAU, HiCookie and G.Skill crew break 3DMARK05 world record live on stage at Computex GSkill booth!

G.Skill put on another fantastic OC show during Computex and had GIGABYTE over on Friday to do some overclocking live. TeamAU was there with dinos22 and youngpro. HiCookie, hiwa and Christian Ney were also present for a day of fun and a very late world record minutes before the venue pulled the power plug on a high clocking Z87X-OC rig and GTX Titans.

Boys from TeamAU, HiCookie and G.Skill crew managed to take the 3DMARK05 world record live on stage with some help from the new Intel Haswell platform and the new Z87X-OC board and dual Titan GPUs.




You can enjoy all the photos and videos over at G.Skill page!


Z87 Windows XP downloads, OC Button drivers, GTL2.0 & Intel ME


Hi guys,

I've noticed a few comments online asking about drivers for Z87 platform for Windows XP so I've decided to upload the version that works properly.

We've also just received our copy of GTL2.0 (GIGABYTE Tweak Launcher software) just in before the weekend for most. It still has a little bit of functionality to be added but we figured the key ones would be useful for you to use in the meantime.

GTL2.0 download download link & New Version with timings.
Intel ME driver for Windows XP (Z87 chipset) 

Windows XP Z87 OC Buttons driver

Windows 7 & 8 Z87 OC Buttons driver

Happy clocking!
Dinos22

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

GIGABYTE unleash the new OC weapon, Z87X-OC!

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Well, where do I start? Oh yeah, I’m excited! Haswell, it’s finally here and ready to go! GIGABYTE has unleashed the new weapon you all know as the “OC” board, namely Z87X-OC.
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The history of OC boards goes back many years ago now with GIGABYTE’s iconic X58A-OC. True overclockers have raved on about this board and still mention it in the early hours of Taipei’s Computex afterparties to this day. This board was the first of its kind, a board dedicated to enthusiasts and overclockers. A board with a sole purpose to focus on a niche community of liquid nitrogen sniffing dudes and crazy watercooling geniuses with their intricate WC loops and masterful tubing configurations celebrating the heart of the technological componentry in people’s PCs, the motherboard! HWBOT wrote an article about this OC board and OC DNA and its significance to the community at the time which I suggest you read to learn about the importance of these to overclockers and Pieter’s long term vision which is pretty interesting in the retrospect!
The core focus of OC board was to make a weapon of a board to it’s bigger brother X58A-UD9 which was skyrocketing HiCookie in its heyday to world best OCer and unprecedented domination. The board was designed to rid of the “bells and whistles” (i.e. no marketing gimmick features), specific features at heart of it’s followers’ requirements and aggressive price point that most could afford. Unfortunately, it had one fatal flaw and that was it’s release date delay which made it virtually obsolete with new platform launch shortly to follow.

Capture2Fast forward past a few evolutionary and some soul searching steps and competitors mimicking the OC logos and a few scattered features but forgetting about the OC DNA and we end up at this week’s launch. GIGABYTE is back to the original OC DNA of making a weapon, streamlined, mean performing machine with the absolute best price point possible and GIGABYTE Z87X-OC is born as is its bigger brother Z87X-OC Force.

It’s been a short few months leading up to the launch I must say and the GIGABYTE team and it’s army of beta testers and inhouse RD & bios teams set upon earlier than normal to do what they are all passionate about and get the GIGABYTE Z87X-OC board ready for the bright lights of launch day. I say “a short” few months as they literally flew past so fast and I can’t recall having been more motivated and having more fun with any board other than the original OC board I talked about.
Let me clear something up for all the guys that contacted me, my colleagues and friends who’ve had experience with the new OC board. Z87X-OC is the heart of the OC design platform and the baseline that was used to build upon with other boards including the OC Force. It’s not a cut down version but rather THE BASE LINE to other motherboards. It is the one, don’t let the price point full you wink wink Winking smile!
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For the extreme overclockers out there, here is a bios HiCookie and Dinos22 (yours truly) used at Corsair and Intel’s Extreme OC event a few days ago in which we took out the $4K Highest Memory Frequency prize. For more information on this competition you can check out an article made by a well known Australian Magazine, PC & Tech Authority over here.

BIOS LINK (for extreme OC).

We are finalising the GIGABYTE Tweak Launcher (GTL 2.0) software and will update it soon, keen an eye on this blog!
There are a number of new features on the latest OC range of boards and I suggest you head over the GIGABYTE Z87 OC range microsite to find out more about them. In the coming weeks we’ll do some OC guides and video introductions of specific features and how to get the most out of them.

Monday, June 3, 2013

GIGABYTE 8 Series Launch: Anandtech Video

Our man Colin visited Anandtech recently to give Anand Lal Shimpi a tour of our new 8 series motherboards. This is really cool look in some detail at pretty much the whole Z87 range that we’re launching this week at Computex 2013 here in Taipei.

Article source.