GIGABYTE GA-X99-Gaming G1 WiFi Motherboard Review
Final Thoughts & Conclusion
The GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi is the flagship Intel X99 Gaming motherboard from GIGABYTE. Since the GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi is their top tier Gaming motherboard for the Intel X99 Platform it’s packed with features, but it does bring along with it a price point that isn’t for the feint of heart, right now it can be found for $344.99, which considering everything GIGABYTE packed onto the X99-Gaming G1 WiFi is pretty reasonable!
GIGABYTE certainly didn’t cut any corners on the X99-Gaming G1 WiFi. The features that are packed into the X99-Gaming G1 WiFi are impressive to say the least. Performance features like the Creative Sound Core 3D, and dual Gigabit LAN are the ones I like in a motherboard. While it’s kinda cool to look at, features like the Ambient Light are wasted on me. I’ve gotten to a point that it’s not all about flash anymore, I don’t know how much it costs to add in the Ambient Light feature, but I think that would have been better spent elsewhere, or to cut the cost of the board. That’s me though, I know there are plenty of people that like the flashiness of it, it’s just not me anymore. I would rather have the performance features.
Overall the performance of the GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi is right where it should be. The X99-Gaming G1 WiFi was a little lower in the charts than I would have liked to see during some of the game benchmarks. That being said, there weren’t any mind blowing differences that I saw today. What differences that I did see in the benchmarks isn’t enough to deter me from using the GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi in my own Intel X99 system build down the road.
If you’ve ever corrupted a BIOS file, you know what a pain it can be. There’s typically only a couple options that you have. First is that it’s time for a new motherboard as you are now sitting on a bricked board. Second is replacing the BIOS chip, which is all fine and dandy if you can A) find one and B) it’s a replaceable chip. The GIGABYTE X99 motherboards now offer another feature, Q-Flash Plus. Q-Flash Plus allows us to flash the Intel X99 motherboards from GIGABYTE to the latest BIOS with nothing but the power supply plugged in and a USB flash drive.
Another one of the many things that I liked about the GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi was the ease of overclocking. While the GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi is part of the G1 Gaming product stack it was certainly no slouch when it comes to overclocking ability. The X99-Gaming G1 WiFi was easily able to top out my Intel Core i7-5960X at 4.5GHz, which remains the highest that I’ve been able to hit when overclocking.
While on the topic of overclocking, I wasn’t impressed by the OC button on the back of the X99-Gaming G1 WiFi. When the OC button was enabled all that happened was all of the cores were brought to an x35 multiplier, while technically that is overclocked I was hoping for more.
While I certainly wouldn’t expect to have any issues with the GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi in the long run, GIGABYTE has the X99-Gaming G1 backed with a solid warranty. The GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi is backed with a three year warranty in North America.
Legit Bottom Line: The GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi motherboard packs a ton of features onto the board for a very reasonable price of only $344.99. The performance of the GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WiFi is right on par with our other Intel X99 motherboard, if you’re in the market for a great gaming board the X99-Gaming G1 WiFi won’t disappoint you!