They say that competition is good for the soul, and they are right. In just about any area you can think of having a little competition makes you better at what you do. In the computer world this is especially noticeable when it comes to motherboards, even more so now that companies like Intel and AMD control the chipsets and their features. The push now comes down to performance tuning (at a very fine level) overclocking an additional features to entice the consumer into picking up a new motherboard. We have had a couple of Z97 based boards in the lab recently, but all have been from the same company. Now we have one in from Gigabyte in the form of the Z97MX Gaming 5. Let’s take a look and see if competition has driven Gigabyte to a higher standard.
Features -In the current market motherboard (and indeed almost all component) performance is very close. The days of a large performance advantage between boards using the same chipset are long gone. That is unless someone makes a HUGE mistake (like runs traces completely wrong). Now, the thing that differentiates different products is the features. These are things like power management, extra slots, better audio CODECs etc. It is these items that R&D teams work so hard to drop into what are really identical pieces of hardware at their most basic level.
Excellent – Killer E2201 LAN ProcessorAMP-UP Audio with Burr Brown OpAmpsSATA ExpressPCIe M.2 PortSegmented Audio ComponentsRear audio AMPSound Blaster X-Fi 3 SoftwareRight and Left channel separation (different PCB layers)
Ok, if you cannot tell the audio is especially impressive on the Z97MX Gaming 5. The extra touches like the Burr Brown OpAmps, rear channel amp and the separation of traces should really make a big difference in the audio that you hear. This is a huge bonus if you are a gamer. The addition of SATA Express and PCIe M.2 SATA is nice and is an excellent feature even if it is an expensive one. Rounding out the excellent features is the E2201 Killer LAN Processor, do we really need to tell you why?
In the middle (sort of good) -SLI
It is a gaming board so you do want this, however it is dual x8 in SLI mode which is not as good as it could be.
Floor Mats -USB 2.0USB 3.0PS/2 PortsIf these are not on the board, then why would you want to get it…
Conclusion – So far things are looking good for the Gigabyte Z97MX Gaming 5 motherboard. The design, layout and feature set are pretty solid for a gaming board. Just the audio components we are seeing should be worth the price of admission. However, the attention to detail does not stop there. You also get a Killer E2201 LAN processor, good component choices across the board (Burr Brown) and more. We are seeing what looks like a shift in design and feature inclusion philosophy a Gigabyte. This new philosophy could mean improved performance for the end user and a much better overall experience. Now we get to dive into the performance side of things and see if it can meet up with what we have seen so far.
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