The A88X chipset and FM2+ platform is a great opportunity for manufacturers to deliver a dedicated gaming platform, GIGABYTE seized this opportunity and allowed the humble APU into their G1.Killer camp. The black and green design looks great, and those fond of this colour pairing will relish this chance to get their hands on this board for their APU. Performance is competitive with other offerings and it has the guts for some decent overclocking too.

All things considered, one could argue that this board breaks the G1.Killer 'no compromise' attitude. There is no additional USB 3.0 besides what is offered by the A88X chipset, no Killer LAN, no ALC1150 audio codec, no SLI (on a gaming motherboard?) and we only get 2x right angle SATA (a kind of status symbol). That sounds like a fair bit of compromise when the competition does offer more features at a similar price. Though, when you consider the solid design of this board (some parts can allegedly take direct lightning bolts from Zeus himself!), a lot of that cost is likely going into reliability... and... the expensive audio setup. The integrated audio certainly is an improvement over many integrated solutions but would have hugely benefited from using the ALC1150 rather than the aging ALC898 and seems a bit of a waste. I guess some may ask a similar question about a gaming platform for an APU?

Allow me to answer that:



The reason this result was not included in the gaming benchmarks, is because it tells an incomplete story. Gaming at 1920x1080 at medium settings on battlefield 4 with the OC settings, achievable on stock cooling, is very smooth and very playable. So much so that I found myself getting engrossed and continuing to play after benching. Not once amongst the explosions (that sounded awesome) gunfights or game play for my 2-3hour bash did I experience any stuttering or slow downs with the min max fps between 27-41. While not perfect, we are expecting the catalyst 14.1 drivers from AMD (Beta already released) that will bring Mantle, and significant performance increases with it. Even if we see 5% increase in FPS, the APU is in that vital zone where every little helps, not to mention that the Kaveri APUs have an improved GPU core using GCN!

If I can game happily at reasonable settings on a system that is only 1/2 of the cost of a mainstream gaming PC, I am sure there are many others who could too.



This platform would have done well as a thought out mATX motherboard, appealing to the mobile gamer and those who want something with decent gaming potential in a smaller form factor. As it stands the G1.Sniper A88X is a fantastic gaming motherboard that comes natively capable for many other home uses, we happily award the Vortez Gold.

The G1.Sniper A88X is a fantastic gaming motherboard that is robust, reliable and pretty. Armed with impressive audio components that gives improved, explosive sounds in your gaming sessions out-the-box, GIGABYTE have your back with this one!



*There has been some concern over BIOS versions for those able to get a Kaveri APU, many FM2+ motherboards will need to have their BIOS updated for compatibility. So please check with the place of purchase for what revision you are buying.



Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net. Thanks to GIGABYTE for providing today’s review sample.