Published: April 3, 2014 | Source: Gigabyte | Author: James Riley

Gigabyte G1 Sniper A88X Review

Conclusion

Before 2014, the Gigabyte Sniper series had always been about performance. The early models running on Intel’s X58 chipset were upwards of £250, and even today the top level Z87-G1 Sniper 5 is around £320. This year however, we’ve seen the launch of the G1 Sniper Z87 which only costs a little over £100, and also this at just £80. It’s clear that Gigabyte are trying to broaden the market of the Sniper series. However, in doing this they have lost the certain prestige of owning a Sniper motherboard, and with the lower cost, you’d be a wrong to think one of these cheaper boards is suddenly going to offer you significantly more performance, and we do think that’s showed a little in the review.

Let’s start with the CPU benchmarks. In pretty much every overclocked test we ran, the Sniper scored a fair amount better than the Gigabyte F2A88XM-DS2. Stock tests were very similar which can be expected, however, the Sniper did allow for an extra 200MHz out of the CPU which has certainly showed in testing. In rendering tests such as x264 and Cinebench, the overclocked tests on the Sniper perform significantly better than the cheaper board, seeing as high as 15% performance increase between the two overclocked scores which is very good for the mere 200MHz difference in clock speeds.

The OpenCL tests do tell a similar story. The Sniper in Musemage scores significantly better than the cheaper alternative. This tests OpenCL rendering performance and if you are looking for a cheap system for rendering and gaming, then the Sniper A88X may present a slightly faster option. BasemarkCL and Luxmark, which do factor the GPU into the equation a little more show the motherboards are pretty evenly matched.

The graphics benchmarks showed incredibly similar scores to what we saw on ‘DS2, although certain tests of 3DMark do favour the Sniper in overclocked tests. Real game benchmarks tell very much the same story as the GPU intensive tests of 3DMark, and performance across nearly every single graphics test is pretty much identical between the two boards, regardless of overclocks.

Now, the Sniper is £40 more expensive than the F2A88XM-DS2 we tested and it is worth mentioning exactly what you get for that. If we take performance out of the equation, the amount of features the Sniper offers for the price is remarkable. The built-in headphone amplifier offers a great selling point for this board, especially when the cheapest dedicated sound card with a headphone amplifier (Xonar DG) costs around £25 alone. Along with this, we also see 8 SATA 3 ports, overall better audio quality, and the board looks great too. With this factored in, regardless of performance, it still makes the Sniper very good value for money. When we do bring performance in, the Sniper does overclock significantly better and these results do show in the CPU tests which in most cases do show a fair increase in performance between the overclock scores from the DS2 and the Sniper. The GPU scores are a little disappointing, and they do perplex us slightly as the GPU clock was running 90MHz faster on the Sniper than the DS2, but we can’t expect everything from a board that only costs £80.

So, for a board that is packed with features, looks great, and only costs £80 it’s very difficult not to recommend it. Sure it doesn’t live up the reputation of it’s £350 Intel chipset brothers, but for £80 it isn’t really trying to, and for a high performance board, built around a relatively budget socket, it would be a great purchase for any APU system.

We’re awarding the Gigabyte G1 Sniper A88X the OC3D Gold Award, and also the value for money award.