Gigabyte G1.Assassin Review

Testing:

To properly test the Gigabyte G1.Assassin, I will run the board through the OverclockersClub.com standard benchmark suite. This consists of a mix of synthetic and real life scenario tests run at OCC's standard 150x20 clock speeds and then again at the highest possible clock speeds achievable with the board. Once the data is collected, I put in the data from all of the other similar boards OCC has tested to get a good idea on how this board performs compared to the others. All tests are run with control panel settings at default. Is the G1.Assassin really up to the job? I certainly want to find out!

Testing Setup:

• Processor: Intel Core i7 920 150x20 3.0Ghz
• Cooling: Air:Noctua NH-U12P SE 1366
• Motherboard: Gigabyte G1.Assassin
• Memory: Mushkin 996805 Redline PC312800 6-8-6-24 1500Mhz
• Video Card: Sapphire HD 5870 1GB
• Power Supply: Mushkin 800watt Modular Power supply
• Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 1TB SATA
• Optical Drive: ASUS DVD-RW
• Case: NZXT Beta Evo
• OS: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

Comparison Motherboards:

• Gigabyte GA-X58-USB3
• ASUS Rampage III Formula
  
• MSI Big Bang XPOWER
  
• MSI Eclipse SLI
• Intel DX58SO

Overclocking:

Overclocked Settings:

• CPU Overclock: 190 x 22 = 4180Mhz

Overclocking is the G1.Assassin is a little different for those coming from the ASUS side of the house. At first it was a little disconcerting and I felt I was missing features, but as time went on I slowly picked up steam and began to find the new places where features I incorrectly though were missing were actually just moved to. Some changes I felt made the BIOS more intuitive, others I liked better on the ASUS boards. I think it all boils down to personal preference though as both boards have very similar BIOS feature sets and both obtained very similar OC results within similar timeframes. I was able to get my chip to 190x22 fairly easily with 1.4v on the core.

Maximum Clock Speeds:

Each CPU has been tested for its maximum stable clock speeds using Prime95. To gauge the maximum stability level, each processor had to be able to perform at least a one hour torture test without any errors.

Benchmarks:

• Scientific & Data:

1. Apophysis
2. WinRAR
3. Geekbench
4. POV Ray 3.7
5. PCMark Vantage Professional
6. Sandra XII
7. ScienceMark 2.02
8. Cinebench 10
9. Cinebench 11.5
10. HD Tune 3.50

• Video:

1. Far Cry 2
2. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
3. Batman Arkham Asylum
4. 3DMark 06 Professional
5. 3DMark Vantage