GIGABYTE X99-Gaming G1 WIFI Motherboard Review
by Ian Cutress on December 18, 2014 10:00 AM ESTCPU Performance
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, memory subtimings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
For reference the X99-Gaming G1 WIFI did not use MultiCore Turbo on BIOS F8c that we used.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link
Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated for 2014 to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.
Video Conversion – Handbrake v0.9.9: link
Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. The principle today is still the same, primarily as an output for H.264 + AAC/MP3 audio within an MKV container. In our test we use the same videos as in the Xilisoft test, and results are given in frames per second.
Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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chizow - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Ian, did you have a chance to thoroughly test out OC'ing on this board, and if so, what BIOS revision did you test? I did note you had a few mentions of the auto-OC feature, but I have the Gaming 5 version of this board and I have to say it is one of the hardest I have ever worked with in over a decade of custom builds. From the feedback on various forums including the Tweaktown Gigabyte BIOS thread, it seems this is pretty consistent across all of the Giga X99 boards.Some of the crazy stuff I have seen is:
1) Hard loop on bad OC settings. They have fixed this somewhat with the latest BIOS so it will usually allow you to re-enter the BIOS on a bad boot/OC. Before you had to do some janky things like disconnect all your RAIDed SATA connections or it would halt on POST and prevent you from getting into the BIOS.
2) Early versions of the BIOS did not allow for ANY overclocking. Things have improved gradually, but I have still found this board takes some 0.02-0.03V higher than other boards to achieve similar OCs. For example, an Asus board might only need 1.265V to achieve 4.5GHz, while I need 1.295V to get 4.4GHz stable.
3) Examples of "mostly" stable (ie. apps, games, stress tests) will have no problems in Windows, but they won't allow for wake from S3 Sleep. Adding more voltage allows the PC to wake but somehow the board defaults to its stock speeds, ie. does not retain overclock once it is awake. Restarting will result in the bad OC screen, showing the OC was not completely stable to begin with. Adding more voltage fixes this, but it is a lot of voltage compared to other boards.
4) This board does not like RAM speeds above the stock 2133MHz. Very disappointing, I'm using 2666MHz Corsair with XMP and this board will run, but again, will not wake from sleep or retain OC settings at higher RAM speeds. I know this is not official JEDEC spec but other boards do not have a problem with this at all. I have not yet tried to use manual settings for the timings, but I really shouldn't have to, that's what XMP is for.
5) Board would not boot at all with the auxiliary 4-pin molex connector attached.
I got this board for a great price (free), so I can't complain too much, but if I had spent my own money I would be very upset with it. I've had good experiences with Gigabyte in the past with their Z87X-UD4 and the X58-UD3R before that, but this board has been a big disappointment. There's probably at least 4-5 bugs I encountered that would've been a showstopper for a less experienced builder, so Gigabyte really needs to clean up their act, imo, because no one should have to jump through the hoops I went through to get this board working with a decent overclock.
That said, this board is probably fine for anyone who is planning to run it bone stock clocks.
BoredTech - Friday, December 25, 2015 - link
This is a game board, the oc board is the SOC from them.angrypatm - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
It's funny how some people are so concerned about the looks and color of a mobo, I guess they wouldn't buy it if it was brown and purple.littlebitstrouds - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Awe, I miss DFI boards.gammaray - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
i don't get it, why invest in a X99 board with a 500$ cpu when a z87 coupled with a 4770 perform just as well?Zan Lynx - Saturday, January 17, 2015 - link
Because "performs just as well" is not true? It might or it might not, but that depends on the application you're using. I'm running a 5960x overclocked to 4.1 GHz and I guarantee it will crush a 4770 like a bug.