Review-Gigabyte G1.Assassin: High-end Gaming in “Military” Style, Part 1 (Features)
Amidst the Sandy Bridge hype, Gigabyte released a new motherboard based on Intel’s older-but-proven X58 platform: the G1-Killer Series. As opposed to Gigabyte’s usual design, the G1-Killer series adopts a “military” style theme that makes it somewhat more attractive than the rest of their product lineups. And it’s not just the looks alone; the high-end motherboards in this series are equipped with some useful features meant to support their primary gaming function. According to Gigabyte’s terms, the highlighted features of choice are called ”Super Sight”, “Super Hearing”,” Super Speed”, and “Super Shield”. Keep reading this article to find out what they mean.
The G1-Killer Series consists of three different variants, namely the G1.Assassin, G1.Sniper, and G1.Guerilla, each is distinguished from the other by the difference in their features. Of all three, G1.Assassin has the most features. Our article here is based on this model. Let’s take a look at it and see what the motherboard is capable of!
Intel X58 Chipset
The picture above explains the working mechanism diagram of Intel’s X58 chipset, consisting of the X58 northbridge and the ICH10R southbridge. X58 provides up to 36 PCI-Express lanes that can be divided into different sets to allow for multi-graphics configuration (SLI or Crossfire). The ICH10R southbridge handles data transfers from I/O devices, such as those coming from the SATA and USB interface.
G1.Assassin, Specification
| Processor Support | Intel Core i7 series in the LGA1366 package |
| QPI | 4.8GT/s, 6.4GT/s |
| Chipset | North Bridge: Intel X58 Express |
| South Bridge: Intel ICH10R | |
| Memory | 6x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 24 Gb system memory |
| Dual/3 channel memory architecture | |
| Support for DDR3 2200/1333/1066/800 MHz memory modules | |
| Support for non-ECC memory modules | |
| Support for Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) memory modules | |
| Expansion Slots | 2x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (running @x16 speed) |
| 2x PCI Express x16 slots (running @x8 speed) | |
| 2x PCI Express x1 slots | |
| 1x PCI slots | |
| Support for 4/3/2-Way ATI CrossFireX and 3/2-Way NVIDIA SLI Technology | |
| Storage | South Bridge : 6 SATA 3Gb/s ports |
| Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10 | |
| Marvell 88SE9182 : 2 SATA 6 Gb/s ports | |
| Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1 | |
| LAN | 1x Bigfoot Killer E2100 chip (10/100/1000 Mbit) |
| Audio | Creative CA20K2 chip (2/4/5.1/7.1-channel ) |
| Support for Dolby® Digital Live/DTS Neo:PC/DTS Interactive | |
| Support for S/PDIF Out | |
| USB | South Bridge : Up to 8 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (4 on the back panel, 4 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers) |
| Renesas (NEC) D720200 chip and 2 x VLI VL810 hubs: Up to 8 USB 3.0/2.0 ports (4 on the back panel, 4 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers) *The USB 2.0 signals of the USB 3.0/2.0 ports are from the South Bridge. | |
| Internal I/O Connectors | 1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector |
| 2 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connectors | |
| 2 x 4-pin PCIe 12V power connectors | |
| 2 x SATA 6 Gb/s connectors | |
| 6 x SATA 3 Gb/s connectors | |
| 1 x CPU fan header | |
| 1 x system fan header | |
| 3 x fan headers | |
| 1 x front panel header | |
| 1 x front panel audio header | |
| 1 x S/PDIF Out header | |
| 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 headers | |
| 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 headers | |
| 1 x clearing CMOS jumper | |
| 1 x Quick Boost button header | |
| 1 x heatsink LED power connector | |
| I/O Controller | iTE IT8720 chip |
| H/W Monitoring | System voltage detection |
| CPU/System temperature detection | |
| CPU/System fan speed detection | |
| CPU overheating warning | |
| CPU/System fan fail warning | |
| CPU/System fan speed control | |
| BIOS | 2x 16 Mbit flash |
| Use of licensed AWARD BIOS | |
| Support for DualBIOS™ | |
| PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.4, ACPI 1.0b | |
| Form Factor | XL-ATX Form Factor; 34.5cm x 26.3cm |
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