Gigabyte is continuing its strong series of offerings in the gaming segment with the launch of the Z97X Gaming GT, a mid-tier motherboard aimed at enthusiast gamers. The board itself is similar to the Z97X Gaming G1, with a few changes – the Gaming GT does not come with liquid cooling support along the sides of the CPU heatsink. What is new in the board is an increased focus on audio. Like most motherboard vendors, Gigabyte is differentiating its product lines by design — the overclocking boards feature an orange and black design motif, while the gaming series of motherboards come with a black on red design. The matte design and the layout of the heatsink gives the Gaming GT a clean look, and the LED trace path lighting illuminates the distinction between the PCB layers and the board’s audio components.

Z97X Gaming GT Overview

Gigabyte packages the Z97X Gaming GT in a premium box that has a carrying handle and a front cover with a rectangular cutout window that allows you to inspect the motherboard without taking it out of the box.

Going over the hardware, it is easy to notice the 8 phase power design and black solid capacitors, which sits just under the CPU heatsink. Beneath the heatsink sit the MOSFETs and a 40nm PLX PEX8747-CA80FBC chip, a 5-port 48-lane PCIe Gen 3 switch that allows you to switch between multiple PCI Express hosts, a feature necessary on a board with a four-way GPU configuration.

Talking about GPUs, the Z97X Gaming GT has two PCIE x16 and two PCIE x8 lanes, with three PCI x1 slots in between. Next to the CPU heatsink are the DRAM slots, USB 3.0 headers, a SATA power connector, CMOS and reset switches along with a debug LED and a 24 pin ATX power connector. The four DDR3 DIMM slots can accommodate a total of 32 GB RAM, and can facilitate memory modules of frequencies up to 3200 MHz and XMP

The audio section on the board is interesting, as the Z97X Gaming GT comes with an AMP-UP audio processor, which is an on-board amp that offers Creative Sound Core3D with gold plated shielding, built-in headphone amplifier, high-end Nichicon audio capacitors and 15u plated gold connectors. Users also have the ability to upgrade amps based on their listening preferences.

On the other side of the motherboard, we find six SATA III and one SATA Express ports. There is an additional Marvell controller that adds two SATA ports. The lower section of the board are where the fan, audio and front panel headers are located. The board has connectors that allow you to connect voltage regulators, but does not feature dedicated OC buttons, which are a mainstay of Gigabyte’s OC line of motherboards.

In terms of ports, Gigabyte is offering two yellow plated USB 2.0 ports that are designed to be used to connect a DAC. The shielded USB DAP-UP ports ensure distortion-free sound delivery. Beneath the USB 2.0 ports is a combo PS/2 port, and next to that we find a VGA port, DVI port, optical S/PDIF out, HDMI out, DisplayPort and six USB 3.0 ports. There is a single gigabit Ethernet port, which is a Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2200 NIC.  Audio is delivered through a gold plated 7.1 channel Realtek ALC1150 that has a SNR of 115dB.

Benchmarks

Gigabyte offers three BIOS interfaces, a classic mode, a StartUp Guide that gives first-time users a minimalistic set of controls and a tweak mode that allows enthusiast users to fine tune settings. There is also a control center that allows users to over clock settings from within Windows should they choose to do so. The control center comes with a host of configurable options that allow you to monitor and change CPU and memory voltages, configure audio settings and change system fan settings. Even though this motherboard isn’t catered to the overclocking segment, you can change voltages and memory profiles via the bundled EasyOC software from the Gigabyte suite of utilities. We put the Gigabyte Z97X Gaming GT through a series of benchmarks to test its overall stability, and while a motherboard in itself does not give you better benchmark scores, the additional features, like the high-end audio hardware and the Killer NIC differentiate the gaming-focused boards from the more mainstream models.

Test System Configuration:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X Gaming GT

Processor: Intel Core i7 4790K

Memory: 16 GB Corsair Vengeance

Video Card: MSI GTX 770 Gaming 2GB

Storage: 250 GB Samsung Evo

Power: Corsair RM850

Cooling: Corsair H100i

Case: Thermaltake Chaser A71

Since the Devil’s Canyon CPU is aimed at the overclocking segment, we’ll take a look at the stock benchmarks at 4 GHz and then see how the CPU fares at 4.5 GHz. First up is CineBench R15:

  Then we move on to Futuremark’s PCMark 8:

3DMark’s Fire Strike gives us a good look at the overall hardware prowess:

In the gaming benchmarks, we see that the GTX 770 is an adequate card for current-gen titles:

All benchmarks were taken at a 1920 x 1080 resolution and 4XAA.

Conclusion

Gigabyte is selling the Z97X Gaming GT in the vicinity of $320 (Rs.19,299) in India, and $225 elsewhere. For the price it is being offered at, the Z97X Gaming GT is a great choice if you’re looking to go the multi-GPU route. The BIOS gives you a wealth of settings, and Gigabyte’s software utilities allow you to tweak every facet of your system with ease. EasyTune is one of the easiest ways for novice users to overclock their system without having to manually change settings in the BIOS. The high-end audio hardware is a nice touch, with the built-in audio processor providing a noticeable improvement in audio quality. The only downside with the motherboard is that even though it has the Z97 chipset, there is no M.2 slot. You’re not missing out on much as hardware that makes use of the M.2 slot is not yet commercial, but it would have been a good feature to have.

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As we had already covered most of what Gigabyte already had to announce from their new 9 series motherboards at the beginning of Computex, we were interested to see exactly what Gigabyte had to show us at their suite on the 36th floor of Taipei 101 (somewhere about 1/3 of the way up).

Taipei 101

After we got to their suite, we were greeted by Gigabyte’s Irene Huang, who graciously showed us around Gigabyte’s suite and introduced us to their full line of motherboards that they had announced earlier in the week. The first thing that caught our attention was Gigabyte’s walls of motherboards, with their new Ultra Durable line of boards to our right hand side. This Ultra Durable wall included both new 9 series boards as well as some older boards for AMD.

Gigabyte Ultra Durable Motherboards

As you can tell, Gigabyte has a multitude of Ultra Durable boards ranging from full ATX boards all the way down to Mini-ITX. After they showed us their Ultra Durable boards, Gigabyte explained to us about their Black Edition boards, which are their premium boards that are tested for 168 hours under extreme conditions under a constantly changing series of tests. These boards are designed to last longer because they’ve already been stress tested and they ultimately are awarded a 5 year warranty if they pass Gigabyte’s rigorous testing. According to company, the expectation is that these boards will only sell for about $20 USD more than the standard Ultra Durable or gaming boards that are made into Black Edition boards. And for that kind of price premium, I have a feeling many people are going to happily pay the price knowing that their boards are likely going to last forever. These may, however, end up getting snapped up by system integrators that know that these boards are far less likely to fail than any other motherboard on the market, making their jobs easier. Following that, we checked out Gigabyte’s Gaming line of motherboards, including a few interesting case mods that featured their latest Z97 boards, including a pretty attractive looking Z97 Mini-ITX board.

Gigabyte Gaming Motherboards

Gigabyte Z97 Mini-ITX Board

Gigabyte Hellboy Z97 Mod

They also had a 3 monitor car racing setup in their suite, which was powered by a modded system, pictured below.

Gigabyte Casemod

Meanwhile, all the time that we were going around Gigabyte’s suite their overclockers were busy using LN2 and prepping their boards for some world records. In fact, I believe they broke a record that day while at the suite, besting their previous record of 4.5 GHz DDR3 clock speed on Gigabyte’s Z97X-SOC motherboard. They were using Gigabyte’s Z97X-SOC and the Z97X-SOC Force boards to do some overclocking, both of which are some of Gigabyte’s newest overclocking motherboards. One not pictured, but used often during the week was the Z97X-SOC Force LN2 motherboard, which is a special board that only has two DIMM slots and no CPU mounting holes. This board is especially created for breaking memory clock speeds and CPU overclocking, which explains why Gigabyte continues to crush the memory clock speed world record. In fact, that speed was set at Kingston’s HOT (HyperX OC Takeover) event during Computex 2014 using Kingston’s DDR3 2933 MHz memory where Gigabyte’s team took first place.  

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As you would expect, Gigabyte has announced their new line of 9 series Intel chipset motherboards, with the primary focus being on their Z97 chipset motherboards. This time around, Gigabyte will have four different flavors of Z97 boards, which will support both 4th and 5th generation Intel Core processors. Gigabyte has rolled over a lot of the things from their Z87 line of motherboards, but also made some modifications and improvements to make the Z97 a worthwhile upgrade.

Gigabyte’s four different lines are their Gaming line, Ultra Durable line, Overclocking line and a new Black Edition line. The bulk of Gigabyte’s boards are going to be in their Ultra Durable line, which comes as a result of the fact that Gigabyte has decided to do away with the Ultra Durable numbering scheme, a good decision. In addition to that, Gigabyte is bringing more and more of their gaming and overclocking premium board features into their mainstream Ultra Durable line of boards. This is a welcome move because it simply improves the overall value of buying virtually any Gigabyte board. Some of those features include improved audio codecs and isolation as well as dual NICs and other gamer-focused innovations.

Gigabyte’s Z97 Gaming G1 Black Edition

However, in terms of excitement, Gigabyte’s most interesting announcement was the announcement of their Z97-OC LN2 board which is strictly an LN2 overclocking motherboard (or HE3). This board is especially interesting because of the way it was designed for optimal memory overclocking. This board recently broke the world record for the fastest memory, ever at 4.5 GHz, beating the previous record of 4.4 GHz on an ASUS board. It is a bit curious, though, that this new record isn’t being posted on HWBot, but maybe it will shortly… This Z97-OC LN2 board is special because it only has two memory slots and no mounting holes for the CPU. Because of these two major design decisions, this board is capable of overclocking memory higher than any board before it. And it was all done using Kingston memory, too.

The rest of Gigabyte’s line pretty much stays the same, gaining a few incremental upgrades here and there with the addition of M.2 connector and SATA Express support with the Z97 chipset. Obviously, not all boards will have these features but they will come and go through the product stack. The only new addition to Gigabyte’s line of boards are their Black Edition boards, which are Gigabyte’s premier quality boards designed and tested to last. All of Gigabyte’s Z97 Black Edition boards are designed for the ultimate durability, enduring 168 hours of grueling testing before being sent out to the customer accompanied by a 5 year warranty. Currently, Gigabyte only has three Black Edition boards, starting with a UD3 board, followed by a UD5 and finally completed with a G1 Gaming Z97 board which pretty much fills the Black Edition lineup with boards from all three different price and feature levels from Gigabyte.

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