GIGABYTE GA-X99-Gaming G1 Review

First announced back in April with the unveiling of GIGABYTE's Z97 motherboards, the newly baptised G1 Gaming Series not only dropped the previous 'G1-Killer' brand name but received a total image makeover as well. The company replaced the controversial but eye-catching lime green colour scheme with bullets, guns, and skulls galore, with a more subdued – and obviously much more common – black and red colour scheme. This isn’t exactly a controversial choice, since it merely puts GIGABYTE in-line with the aesthetics of the ASUS Republic of Gamers (RoG) and MSI Gaming motherboard series.

The GIGABYTE GA-X99-Gaming G1 WIFI motherboard that we are reviewing today is arguably tied with the X99-SOC Force as the company's top-of-the-line LGA2011-3 model, but unless you fancy yourself a really world-class overclocker this Gaming G1 model has a lot more to offer. In fact, in our opinion it presents the best that GIGABYTE has to offer. With a retail price of about $345USD/$390CAD, the Gaming G1 WIFI is unquestionably a high-end motherboard, but it's been designed for those who truly know what they want.

Graphics performance is a highlight of this model thanks to the four physical PCI-E x16 slots making full use of the advanced PCI-E capabilities of the Haswell-E processors and thus supporting both 4-way SLI and 4-way CrossFire. But that's only the tip of iceberg when it comes to the gaming capabilities. There is a dedicated Creative Sound Core3D quad-core audio processor, which is a real differentiating factor when compared to the often mundane Realtek based onboard audio solutions found on most motherboards. Not only do you get advance gaming audio features, but GIGABYTE's implementation includes an excellent user-replaceable Burr Brown op-amp, high-end Nichicon Muse ES capacitors, a powerful headphone amplifier, and shielding and isolation to protect the audio portion of the motherboard from electrical interference.

Audiophiles will also be glad to know that there are two DAC-UP USB ports, which are special ports that have been isolated from the rest of the motherboard in order to minimize the signal noise that gets transferred to your external USB DAC. Not to be overlooked, there's also a gaming-oriented Killer E2201 LAN controller and its powerful Killer Network Manager utility.

Connectivity and features wise things continue to impress the longer you look. There are two M.2 connectors - one for storage and one for connectivity, one SATA Express 10Gb/s port, ten SATA 6Gb/s ports (counting the two on the SATAe port), eight USB 3.0 ports, two USB-DAC USB 2.0 ports, four USB 2.0/3.0 headers, one Intel-powered Gigabit LAN port and one Qualcomm Killer LAN port, a Thunderbolt 2.0 header, an Intel dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi module with Bluetooth v4.0, debug LED, a bunch of onboard buttons and switches, voltage read points, and a cool set of LEDs that you can literally make dance to the music via the new Ambient LED feature.

However, as we will always repeat, features and specs are great but they are of no relevance whatsoever if the motherboard is cramped, unstable, overclocks poorly, and has a wonky software package. Therefore, we are here to find out if GIGABYTE have managed to deliver a truly complete high-end package with the X99-Gaming G1.