At COMPUTEX 2014 this year, GIGABYTE announced a new branding for their gaming series of motherboards. While the extra features like high end integrated audio, preset UEFI BIOS and software overclocking and stability, remain the same, the new boards offer a much more mainstream design, rather than the military motif of their previous products. With the arrival of the new Intel Z97 chipset, it seemed like the perfect time for the company to make this move.
We’ve received their latest G1 Gaming motherboard, the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT, which follows the same feature rich design as the previous G1 series, but is now clad in the new red and black styling. We took a detailed look at this new board to see if it measures up to the legacy left by their previous products.
Features and Specifications
If you’re a fan of games, like myself, you want the short-short version of the features. Many of them are a lot like the previous Z87 G1 generation. Let’s break it down.
- Compatible with 4th Gen (Haswell) and 5th Gen (Devil’s Canyon) processors
- Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi MB3 software suite
- OP-AMP audio amplifier: swappable and configurable amplifier socket
- Noise Guard: LED path lighting and noise elimination
- Dual USB DAC-UP for noise-free digital to analog conversion
- Killer E2200 (embedded) network controller: prioritize games
- 4-way NVidia SLI and AMD CrossFireX support
- Intel SATA Express
- DualBIOS UEFI: easy BIOS recovery
The components used to build the board include Nichicon capacitors for consistent audio quality and solid state (black) capacitors all of which improve the life span of the board. Missing though is any sign of M.2 SSD support, which seems to go hand in hand with most Z97 boards. Instead, GIGABYTE has added a SATA Express support instead.
Software includes GIGABYTE’s APP Center which must be installed first if you want to add their useful fan app, EasyTune and Cloud Station apps. Essentially, the entire software suite can be used to control fan speeds individually as well as charging ports or IO connectivity. Additionally, the Killer Network Manager lets users prioritize the programs that require bandwidth. For example, Windows Update doesn’t need to have full bandwidth when you’re gaming, much less be running.
Finally, the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT motherboard comes with a 3 year warranty (4 years in some markets like the UK) and retails for around the $239 US price range.
What’s In the Box?
The box includes a basic amount of items to get your elite gaming system up and running. Users get four black SATA, matching black/read IO shield, two-three-four way graphics bridges, case badges, and manuals along with software DVD. The software on the DVD is mostly likely a little older than what’s on the GIGABYTE support page. So check there after installing the LAN driver from the disc for the latest version. Or use the new GIGABYTE APP Centre to help automate the process, after you install the latest version off their site.
Other than that, the load out is fairly standard for most GIGABYTE gaming motherboards, and comparable to other brands.
What Makes it a Gaming Motherboard?
Certain features make a product truly gamer. You can’t just give it a catchy title or random color theme and expect gamers to spend their hard earned money on just that. In fact, that commonly used tactic most often backfires and turns into a less than stellar user experience. That said, GIGABYTE has spent quite a bit of time giving their G1 series a set of features that resonates throughout their brand. One of those features is the enhanced audio.
GIGABYTE’s AMP UP audio was featured back when they launched their Z87 series of boards, which allows the swapping of OP AMPs, but it’s taken a bit further in this series. An OP AMP is essentially an amplifier IC socket with configurable amplification modes via four dip switches. Gamers can order any of the near 40 compatible amps on the market. The amps all provide varied frequency and volume enhancements so the combinations are many. Just make sure you power off the board before swapping amplifiers.
Audio extras include the Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi MB3 software suite that unlocks more of the audio processor’s capabilities. Gamers can tweak settings to fit the games they like to play including programmable presets. Scout Mode can help give gamers a handy edge detecting their opponents as long as the game supports it. Otherwise, you must rely on skill. Additionally, Sniper Mode augments mouse DPI polling also to help tweak standard or gamer designed mice.
Design and Layout
The GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT doesn’t quite boast the same amazing military grade look as the previous Sniper 5. Instead of green and black, gamers get red and black which honestly works better with many of today’s enthusiast memory, video cards, CPU coolers, and liquid cooling systems. While clean and confident, it may not win any OMFG first impression awards. But it does address one of the downsides of the previous military motif, which is alienation of gamers that may be more mainstream, and play games like League of Legends or DOTA2, rather than BF4 and Crysis 3.
The DIMM slot area offers power, reset, and CMOS clear buttons. I personally don’t like my CMOS clear button so close to the others. It has been a little too easy accidentally hitting the button while reaching for other things. Still, they’re handy if you have a really cool abstract aftermarket computer case.
As mentioned earlier, not found on this platform is an M.2 SATA Express 10Gb/s port, which seems standard on everyone else’s board. That’s okay since gamers would rather spend money on audio, graphics, connectivity, and overclocking stability, rather than invest in another alternate SSD format.
To offer higher throughput though, GIGABYTE has included SATA Express ports for those newly released high performance SSDs. But it’s still backwards compatible with previous generations of SATA based SSDs, so you aren’t losing any ports, with the right adapters.
IO and Connectivity
Starting from left to right on our GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT board, the two yellow USB 2.0 ports are the USB-DAC which can help clean up audio for external USB audio devices such as headsets and outboard audio devices that draw power/data from USB. This of course bypasses the great audio onboard, but it is in keeping with the brand dedication to best possible audio. Below that is a PS2 port for those of use that don’t want to let go of the past. There are also six USB 3.0 ports which will come in handy for high bandwidth devices like storage devices.
For onboard graphics, there are also VGA, DVI, HDMI, and Displaylink ports. The VGA port still looks strange in this day and age, but it’s also worth noting that VGA is still dominant in many markets, so there is a purpose for it. But of course, less so on a board that will likely see usage in conjunction with a discrete audio solution.
Finally, there are six marked gold colored analog audio out ports. The optical out port is above the HDMI/Displaylink ports. Useful for connecting your gaming PC to your home theatre system for big screen gaming.
Test System Setup
The test system components were assembled and configured as follows. The latest drivers and BIOS (at the time of writing) were installed and updated for testing.
- Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K Devil’s Canyon
- Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT
- Memory: Kingston HyperX Beast 2x8GB
- Storage: Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD
- Graphics: ZOTAC GTX 770 2GB
- Power: be Quiet 850 Watt Dark Power Pro 10 (80Plus Gold)
- CPU Cooling: be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 3
Installation went off without any real glitches or obstacles. All of the onboard USB, audio, IO, and SATA ports worked perfectly. Keep in mind that sometimes Windows won’t properly detect every device, so a quick reboot most often cures that.
Connecting two NVIDIA GTX 780s was easy enough and the auxiliary SATA power connector above the SATA data ports fed extra power to the PCI Express slots, just in case the need arises.
All testing was done on a freshly loaded Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS with all the patches.
Overclocking the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT
Devil’s Canyon overclocking is limited by heat more so than any processor in the last five years. Sure, it idles quite cool but under load it’s about 10 C hotter – thus under overclocked frequencies, the tempereatures are even higher. Intel recommends 80C as the top allowable operating temp. That said, our Devil’s Canyon chip hits 80C very quickly at 4.8 GHz using 1.35 to 1.38 volts. The max DDR3 frequency reachable was 2600MHz which isn’t bad at all.
Does that performance improve gaming? Well, the games load quicker but it only helps certain games. Does it improve a task like transcoding or video encoding? Sure, it does but not by much because the CPU turbos to 4.4 GHz so 4.8 GHz isn’t exactly an earth shattering overclock. Respectively, the free to download GraySky H.264 5.0 benchmark increased from 81.2 to 84.5 frames 1st pass and 18.6 to 20.2. That’s not much of a boost but it is something.
Let’s look at the BIOS that makes this possible.
BIOS Setup Notes
One of the things I try to test is the back up BIOS (which I don’t recommend you trying because it could be risky). Essentially, I hit the power during a flash, switch BIOS, and let it recover. The BIOS switches flipped the board from conservative gamer to overclocked gamer easily. Bottom line – it works!
Moving on, the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT actually has a three layer BIOS. A basic settings, or Startup Guide tile screen is the first thing you see. The bottom left corner contains details of what users will find in each tile. Users can change things like boot options, enable Fast Boot, SATA boot settings, Security (got to have it), and Start-Up to further speed up the boot process. From here, users can switch to Classic Mode.
Classic Mode looks like many of the previous blue BIOS generations. This is a more manual method for configuring the BIOS that many users are still use to. It’s the most detailed but still lacks the UEFI visuals. If you want those, select Smart Tweak Mode (STM) from here.
Once in STM, users will see the high speed “GIGABYTE OC” style orange UEFI BIOS. It has all the settings a meticulous overclocker may need for squeezing out more performance. Users just have to click the OFF-ON selector and drag the slider. Unfortunately, the graphics are a bit cut off at the bottom of the screen and the trailing footer very slowly crosses over other text. The header text is also slightly covered by the indicator line. Other than these anomolies, the BIOS worked as needed especially overclocking.
Like all Devil’s Canyon processors, it’s too easy to hit 80C and higher at 4.8 to 4.9 GHz which is achievable on the Gaming GT. My pro suggestion is to stick with the highest 4.7 GHz frequency BIOS preset. As long as you have really good cooling, the board will manage the rest.
Benchmark Configuration
Benchmark and testing software includes: Gaming (Crysis 3, Metro Last Light, and Battlefield 4), Overall system (PCMark7), IO benchmarks (CrystalDiskMark and SANDRA), Audio (RightMarkAudio Analyzer), and extras like overclocking performance. All of these make up our comprehensive testing to ensure a realistic and enjoyable end user experience.
Gaming Performance
It’s a gaming motherboard right? Here we see the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT holds its own fine in games. It has more to do with the graphics but we saw no anomalies with a single or dual GTX 770s in this batch of tests.
PCMark7 – Overall System Performance
PC Mark does a great job of stressing a system for overall performance in a range of apps from multimedia to productivity. It appears that the extra audio and BIOS tuning definitely helps the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT. Using the Z97 chipset’s native SATA Express ports will definitely help achieve the best performance of course in these types of overall system benchmarks.
IO Performance
A Thermaltake Blac X 5G SuperSpeed USB 3.0 docking station was paired with a more aggressive ADATA Premiere SP610 240GB SSD simply to show some of the max potential Z97 is capable of providing. Keep in mind, a platter drive will be much slower as you can see in the scores below.
When paired with the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT, the USB 3.0 perked up greatly with a capable storage device. It’s not as fast as ASUS’ specialized USB 3.0 Boost or UASP support but it’s better than some slow platter drive.
RightMarkAudio Analyzer
All I can say is that I love the OP AMP feature. Games sound great with such decent volume and clarity. It’s nice having clear noise free audio, both from the USB port as well as the analog ports. And, the dip switches can help change the experience seemingly on the fly. However, the audio level coming out isn’t quite as robust as the Sniper 5. Either way, once you sample this feature, you’ll probably be spoiled and won’t accept anything different.
Final Thoughts
It’s interesting to see how the Haswell-R (Devil’s Canyon) has inadvertently leveled the overclocking playing field, forcing motherboard manufacturers to really focus on delivering features rather than high end overclocking. Features shouldn’t just be fancy tech lingo and pictures on a product box. And that’s what the refocusing of the G1 Gaming brand is about, which is to make boards more approachable for mainstream gamers.
The GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT is quite possibly the best cost effective gaming solution for enthusiasts who expect a stable platform, beneficial audio performance that enhances any game genre, and overclocking that is as good or better as their own flag ship motherboards. But if you simply want to leave it alone and let the software do the job, GIGABYTE has done a fantastic job updating their EasyTune software to be more in tune with the mainstream user that doesn’t necessarily want to tweak for performance.
The GIGABYTE GA-Z97X Gaming GT retails for around $239 US, which is affordable when compared to the company’s previous efforts. And with all the great features onboard, just plug in your favourite headset, and you’ll be one happy gamer.
Pros
- Stable and reliable Z97 platform
- Fast performance with an aggressive BIOS
- Capable overclocker with the right settings
- Great quality construction and decent layout
- New G1 Gaming theme is attractive
Cons
- UEFI BIOS can be complicated
- Smart Tweak Mode needs some cleaning up
- Some users may miss the aggressive G1 Military Style
Overall Rating: 8.75/10
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