Saturday, April 8, 2017
GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming G1 is Tom’s Hardware 2015 Editor’s Choice
GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming G1 is Tom’s Hardware 2015 Editor’s Choice
Available link for download
Friday, March 31, 2017
GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 Black selected as “Motherboard of the Year” by PC PowerPlay Magazine
GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 Black selected as “Motherboard of the Year” by PC PowerPlay Magazine
GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 Black has been selected as the “Motherboard of the Year” by PC PowerPlay Magazine in Australia. PC PowerPlay Magazine is the biggest gaming magazine in Australia and clearly rates our top spec Z97 Gaming board as the best of the best. Make sure you get one on your next upgrade! The magazine doesn’t have a definite pick on the CPU side so we’ll take the liberty of suggesting for a good match. We’d recommend the Intel 4690K or 4790K for high end or as a pure gamer even the Intel Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition is a killer performer in 3D!
Available link for download
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Have you got your X99 board yet ready for some gaming action this weekend
Have you got your X99 board yet ready for some gaming action this weekend
I built a new gaming rig to have some fun this weekend and thought I’d share my excitement and see who else is up for some gaming on the weekend.
Have a look at this awesome download speed with Telstra 100Mbps cable internet and GIGABYTE X99 SOC Force Intel Gigabit LAN downloading at a constant 13.6MB/s!!!
Time to fire up some GRID Autosport
Btw, loving this Ambient LED feature. Looks awesome in a dark room.
Dino
Available link for download
Thursday, November 10, 2016
GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming G1 Custom Build
GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming G1 Custom Build
Here is a GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming G1 custom build weve been working on for our Intel Roadshow. Share it with your friends if you like it!
SYSTEM SPEC:
- GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming G1
- Intel 6700K @4.5GHz
- GIGABYTE 290X GPU
- Corsair H110i watercooling
- Corsair 16GB Vengeance DDR4 3200MHz
- Corsair AX760 PSU
- Corsair 512GB Force SSD
- Inwin 805 case
- Bitfenix LEDs
- Bitfenix LED Fans
- Bitfenix Cable Sleeving
- Windows 10 Pro
Available link for download
Friday, November 4, 2016
Heres Why Its Time to Upgrade Your Gaming System
Heres Why Its Time to Upgrade Your Gaming System
The average PC refresh cycle is getting longer and longer. While at one time a person was likely to refresh their PCs every two-to-three years, this cycle has stretched on to now be between five to seven years. While hardcore gamers might update their hardware on a 12 month cycle, the average person that doesnt have a budget to do yearly upgrades might still be using hardware form 2010.
And for the average person this might work -- but it wont work well. While hardware from 2010 might be able to play 2015s latest games, it will only do so with choppy frame rates at the lowest resolutions and graphics settings. This is far from an enjoyable gaming experience, and is not how the developers intended the games to be played.
Just to show you the performance advantage a modern system featuring an Intel® 6th. Gen™ CPU, DDR4 RAM, an Intel 750-series SSD, a GIGABYTE WindForce GeForce 980 Ti graphics card on a GIGABYTE Z170X-Gaming G1 motherboard has over a system with a 2010-era high-end hardware weve prepared a video demonstrating the vast difference in performance. As you will see, our benchmarking of the resource demanding Grand Theft Auto V and the benchmark suite Catzilla shows that the 2010-era system struggles while the GIGABYTE G1 Gaming motherboard based system has no problem.
Check out the video below from the GIGABYTE Motherboard and Brix YouTube channel:
Building a 2015 gaming machine
For the benchmarking tests we chose to put together a system that would represent what an average user would be after if they wanted to build a high-end system. Of course, there are those that have the budget for an extreme system with multiple graphics cards and extensive watercooling systems but many gamers simply dont have the budget for that and want high-end gaming at an affordable price.
Lets go through the parts used in building the PC and why we chose them.
GIGABYTE 100 Series Motherboard: For this video we used the GIGABYTE Z170X-Gaming G1 motherboard, the flagship Gaming motherboard of GIGABYTEs 100 Series lineup. The Gaming G1 motherboard has many high-end features that set it miles apart from the competition.
For audiophiles looking to game with crystal-clear sound the Gaming G1 motherboard has a Creative® Sound Core3D™ Quad-Core audio processor with a Burr-Brown high end 127 dB DAC which is Creative® certified ZxRi 120+dB SNR . For those with an interest in overclocking, the GIGABYTE Z170X-Gaming G1 board features enhanced BCLK frequency tuning, allowing overclockers to make adjustments outside of the traditional 5% straps. In addition, for gamers that play online, lag is a thing of the past: this board features the lag-killing Killer DoubleShot-X3™ Pro which intelligently routes traffic over the boards available connections ensuring that online games run silky smooth even as downloads continue in the background.
While this motherboard might be right for someone with a bigger budget for a system build, theres also the GIGABYTE Z170X-Gaming 7 or the Z170X-Gaming 3 for those that need to stay within a smaller budget. All of these GIGABYTEs 100 Series motherboards support the latest Intel 6th.® Gen™ CPU, DDR4 RAM, feature onboard USB Type-C™ and have other innovative and award-winning GIGABYTE features.
Intel 6th. Gen CPU: For those wanting the best in price-performance, theres no better choice than an Intel 6th. Gen CPU. As you can see in the video it offers double-digit performance gains over a CPU from the last generation. Under the lid Intel has made improvements to the micro architecture to make it more efficient.
One of the things Intel has improved is the processors ability to fetch and dispatch up to six instructions at once and store up to 224 instructions in its out-of-order buffer at once (up from 192 in Haswell).
In addition, it has enhanced support for DDR4, support for USB 3.1 over USB Type C, and better baseclock tuning for enhanced overclocking support.
If youre after some more in-depth benchmarking and analysis check out these reviews from around the web.
DDR4 RAM: First supported on Intel fifth-generation CPUs, DDR4 is the latest generation of RAM offering a range of improvements over over DDR2 and DDR3.
The primary advantages of DDR4 is that is offers higher speeds -- between 800 to 1600 MHz -- than DDR3 which had a maximum frequency of 1067 MHz, as well as it runs at a lower voltage.
The big speed increases that DDR4 offers makes it a must have for any gamer looking to get the most out of his system.
Intel 750 Series SSD: Over the past five years SSDs have gone down in price dramatically while increasing in speed and storage. Now, the cost per gigabyte of an SSD is getting to be very competitive to an HDD for the average user (with the cost/GB approaching $1). SSDs are faster than HDDs because they use something called non-volatile NAND memory instead of a magnetic platter and actuator arm. On average, a PCIe-based SSD will offer a 4X speed improvement over an HDD. For a more detailed explainer of the differences between an HDD and SSD, you can check out this post from PC Mag.
For our system we used the Intel 750 Series SSD. This SSD fits right into the motherboards PCI-e slot, and uses a controller protocol developed by Intel called Non-Volatile Memory Express (commonly shortened as NVMe). Benchmarks published online show that the SSD can push 2.4GB/sec of read and 1.2GB/sec of write bandwidth. For gamers this means that demanding games (such as Grand Theft Auto V which we tested) can run at a better FPS as the system has faster access to the games data and high-resolution textures.
Its time to upgrade
Available link for download
Monday, October 24, 2016
GIGABYTE X99 Gaming 5P Receives the Editor’s Choice Award from TT
GIGABYTE X99 Gaming 5P Receives the Editor’s Choice Award from TT
Source
Steven Bassiri from Tweak Town publish last week his take on the GIGABYTE X99-Gaming 5P. I think it is safe to say that he liked his experience with the gaming motherboard. But why don’t you see for yourself, here is his final thoughts on the mobo.
Final Thoughts
The X99-Gaming 5P is a really solid Intel X99 motherboard. Being part of the second wave, it has fixes for some of the issues with GIGABYTEs first generation of X99 motherboards. The optimization of feature placement, larger heat sink, and socket with extra pins all provide incentives for the purchase of the new X99-Gaming 5P over its predecessor.
Overall system and IO performance is up to par with the best performing boards. The direct routing of PCH and CPU bandwidth to the slots and ports provides great compatibility and performance. While it has a 6-phase VRM, thermal performance and overclocking is excellent. I would have liked to see some OC features like a POST code display, but OC recovery was exceptional so if it had a POST code you probably wouldnt really need it. The extra pins in the socket and revised DDR trace routing help to increase cache overclocks and decrease the required amount of system agent voltage. While the cache frequency increase might not benefit those on air or water cooling, GIGABYTE is able to guarantee certain DDR4 3333MHz kits work with only XMP enabled, such as those from Corsair.
Overall I was impressed with the feeling of maturity the X99-Gaming 5P provided over its predecessor and other X99 motherboards I have tested. GIGABYTE does provide some premium gaming features, specifically in the audio section. The X99-Gaming 5P has GIGABYTEs top of the line onboard audio, and the replaceable amplifier with gain switch makes it one of the most versatile audio solutions for a motherboard.
Available link for download