G1 Sniper 2 (Z68) Preview!

Details: Category: LGA1155 (P67/Z68); Created on Wednesday, 03 August 2011 21:19; Published on Wednesday, 03 August 2011 21:19; Written by Super User; Hits: 12627

Today I take honor in being able to unveil the GIGABYTE G1 Sniper 2, based on the Z68 platform. GIGABYTE is adding full Ivy Bridge support with PCI-E 3.0 as well as BIOS that supports the 22nm shrink of Sandy Bridge, I guess we can call this board a third generation Sandy Bridge motherboard. This board is loaded with Creative 20K2 audio with high quality Nichicon capacitors with audio amplifiers as well as Bigfoot Killer E2100 Gaming NIC. I know a lot of people were anxiously awaiting the release of the Z68 version of the original X58 based G1 Killer boards, and here it is!

Please note that this is not a review, also what is shown isn't necessarily going to be the final product, it could be though. This is a very early sample which was not easy for me to get my hands on so soon. I was able to grab a few high quality pictures to give my readers a sneak peak at this new board. Please enjoy!

Here are the specs based upon my observation.

12 Phase VRM (8+2+2)

PCI-E 3.0 slots in this order: 1x,16x,1x,8x.

Triple slot pacing and two PCI slots.

Back Panel:

7.1 Audio Out

2 x USB 3.0

7 x USB 2.0

1 x eSATA/USB 2.0 port

PS/2 Keyboard or Mouse

OC button

HDMI Port for QuickSync

Internal Headers:

3 x USB 2.0

1 x USB 3.0

Front Panel Audio Headers

Front Panel OC Button Header

5 x SATA 3GB/s

4 x SATA 6GB/s

The board's features as a whole are pretty similar to previous gen, except they have moved the layout to better suit the board. For instance I had an issue with my X58 Assassin, when I wanted to do SLI with two cards the second card would sit right on top of the front panel OC button connector. It would unseat my GPU just very slightly, but GIGABYTE seems to have fixed this by moving the OC button pins to the corner of the board. They moved USB 3.0 internal header to the edge of the board as well towards the right side, so that that the front panel USB 3.0 cable will reach.

BTW yes there is nothing under the middle heatsink :)

Copper EMI "shield" compared to the X58 Assassin surrounding the Audio Capacitors.

Currently i have 0 accessories to show you guys, as I know accessories with the G1 are pretty unique.

PCI-E 3.0 and 22nm Ivy Bridge Support, P13PCIE PCI-E 3.0 MUX/DEMUX for true PCI-E 3.0 lanes switching.