Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 Z68 Motherboard Review

Test System Configuration Notes: When configuring our test system for this article, we first entered the system BIOSes and the board to its "Optimized Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set the memory frequency to DDR3-1333. We updated the OS and installed the drivers necessary for our components. Auto-Updating and Windows Defender were then disabled and we installed all of our benchmarking software, performed a disk clean-up, defragged the hard drives, and ran the tests.

Preliminary Testing with PCMark Vantage Synthetic Benchmarks

First up, we ran our system through Futuremark’s total-system performance evaluation tool, PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage runs through a host of different usage scenarios to simulate different types of workloads including High Definition TV and movie playback and manipulation, gaming, image editing and manipulation, music compression, communications, and productivity.

Most of the sub-tests used to come up with the final scores in each category are multi-threaded as well, so the tests can exploit the additional resources offered by a multi-core CPU.

The Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 didn’t do as well in the PCMark Vantage test. It posted the second lowest score of the boards we compared it to, below the two other Gigabyte boards. It did reasonably well in the Communications sub-test but trailed behind the pack in the more important sub-tests, including Gaming, Productivity, and Memories. However, the variance between each of the boards tested is not large, relatively speaking.

Futuremark PCMark 7 General Application and Multimedia Performance

Futuremark's PCMark 7 is the latest version of the PCMark suite, recently released this spring. It has updated application performance measurements targeted for a Windows 7 environment. Here's what Futuremark says is incorporated in the base PCMark suite and the Entertainment suite, the two modules we have benchmark scores for you here.

The PCMark test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance during typical desktop usage. This is the most important test since it returns the official PCMark score for the system

Storage
* Windows Defender
* Importing pictures
* Gaming

Video Playback and transcoding
Graphics
* DirectX 9

Image manipulation
Web browsing and decrypting

The Entertainment test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance in entertainment scenarios using mostly application workloads. Individual tests include recording, viewing, streaming and transcoding TV shows and movies, importing, organizing and browsing new music and several gaming related workloads. If the target system is not capable of running DirectX 10 workloads then those tests are skipped. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given an Entertainment test score.

In the PCMark 7 test, the G1.Sniper2 did much better, posting the second-best score in PCMarks and the highest score in the Entertainment test.