G1.Assassin 2 Review

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Category: GIGABYTE G1.Assassin 2 Review

Created on Wednesday, 25 January 2012 04:05

Published on Wednesday, 25 January 2012 04:05

Written by Super User

LGA2011 boards have been out for a few months now, let's take a look at how the GIGABYTE G1.Assassin 2 rumbles under my purview. I will dissect every aspect of this monstrous motherboard and reveal all of its secrets. I will compare it directly with its OC counterpart, the X79-UD7, and put it through its paces at 4.5GHz. I also have some nice surprises for my readers today, some things to spice up quality as well as showcase the product better. So take the G1.Assassin 2 review for a spin and let us know how you like the board!

The G1 Assassin 2 is a 3^rd generation G1 Killer. It’s a gaming board, but the best of the best gaming boards. Sure other boards might have some overclocking features like buttons, voltage read points, and cool sub-zero temp meters but what gamer is ever going to use those while gaming? I am not saying that this board doesn’t overclock, it in fact does overclock great, but it is more geared towards gamers and thus you only pay for gaming features. It’s built upon the basic GIGABYTE X79 design of the UD3, but souped up just like the UD7, instead with different goodies. GIGABYTE has kept basic cost structure the same, with their G1 series being ~$150 more than their mid-range offering of the UD3 or UD4 in some cases. The reason why it is higher is because of some very nice parts used on the board. When we say XF-I and G1 in the same sentence, we aren’t talking about the Realtek ALC889 codec paired with software emulation which most if not all current motherboards labeled with XF-I have(excluding G1 Killer series), but we are talking about a real XF-I setup hardware wise as well. We are talking about a Creative 20K2 processor, 128MB DDR memory, 5 AMPs for outputs, some very nice DACs and ADCs, and some sexy audio capacitors. When we talk about a gaming NIC we aren’t talking about a Realtek or Intel NIC, we are talking again about a Bigfoot e2100 implementation, along with its own resources as to not eat into those of the CPU. If you add in the advanced fan and temperature control that all the G1 carries $150 more is not much if you already were going to get those other things. Even if you just wanted a sound card the idea still sounds good as you will have un-obstructed SLI as well as more freed up resources.

So many resources are off-loaded from the main system, you could put the G1 Assassin 2 up against any of board in the GIGABYTE X79 line up and run some gaming benchmarks and you might be surprised as to the gains. Sure a few FPS might not sound a like a lot to most of you, but there are people who upgrade from Z68 to X79 just for a few FPS in BF3. If you take that amount of FPS gained by going Z68 to X79 and then use the G1 Assassin 2 and you can increase that margin of improvement by almost 30% extra compared to going from one platform to another! Today’s review is going to be just as in depth as my others, but I am introducing some new cool diagrams that will interest some of my readers who want a cooler technical feel to reviews. Just remember you might have to click on them, as some are too big to fit on the screen.