CES 2012: GIGABYTE Shows Intel Z77 Motherboard Lineup For Ivy Bridge

GIGABYTE Intel Z77 G1.Sniper Series Motherboards

The day before CES 2012 opens up to the public, Legit Reviews has been busy with press conferences and meetings with the various companies that we work with. Today we were able to attend the GIGABYTE press conference where they had some great information for us. Possibly the most exciting point of the meeting was the sneak peek at several of GIGABYTE’s Intel Z77 ‘Ivy Bridge’ motherboards!

The GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 3 was one of the first of the GIGABYTE Intel Z77 motherboards that Legit Reviews was able to get a little bit of hands on time with. First thing that we noticed was the lack of fancy heatsinks. This is still a pre-preduction motherboard. So I’m sure we’ll see the gun themed heatsinks once the G1.Sniper3 and the Intel Ivy Bridge platform launches later this year.

Looking at the I/O panel on the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 3 we can see that it has all SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports on the back, six in total. It also has a single PS/2 port that can be used for either a keyboard or a mouse. Not to surprising is the display options for the Intel Z77 chipset. We have DVI, VGA, HDMI, and a single Display port. The GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 3 features dual gigabit LAN, one of them is an Intel based chipset while the other is the latest Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2201 NIC.

GIGABYTE was kind enough to put out some display cards with some of the specifications for each of the boards. The first and most important specification is the support for the next Generation Intel 22nm processors in the LGA1155 package. The next generation of Intel 22nm CPU’s is commonly know as Ivy Bridge. The GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 3 also includes the latest audio chipset from Creative, the Sound Core 3D. Much of the remaining details of the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 3 is common to the G1 Killer series of motherboards.

One product that the GIGABYTE G1 Killer series of motherboards has been lacking is a small form factor solution. GIGABYTE is solving that issue with the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3. The GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 is a micro ATX motherboard that is packed with features like Creative Audio, PCIe Gen 3, and of course support for Intel Ivy Bridge.

The board that Gigabyte showed us wasn’t the final design though and the picture above shows the same board with a different color scheme.

The I/O panel for the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 is similar in features as the G1.Sniper 3 above, though it is lacking the Dual LAN, and only offers two SuperSpeed USB 3.0, the remaining four of the total six USB ports are USB 2.0.

As you can see GIGABYTE didn’t disclose any more information about the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 than they did about the G1.Sniper 3 above. The biggest difference of course is the form factor and the features built into the G1.Sniper M3 due to its size. Because it is a micro ATX solution they obviously can’t run Quad SLI or CrossFireX. One feature that they didn’t include on the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 is the Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2201 NIC. Though they are running an Intel NIC which I would personally prefer across the entire G1 Killer Series, but that’s just my preference.