Evidence that Gigabyte listens to gamers is found throughout its Assassin motherboards, beginning with the usual, “Give us a stripped-down overclocking board with plenty of slots to mount our high-end NICs and audio cards.” But wait. Aren’t those network and audio jacks we see?
With SLI potentially consuming a bunch of slots, Gigabyte improved upon the concept suggested by those requests (which go back as far as any of us can remember) by placing the high-end NIC and audio processor on-board. Here we find a Killer NIC E2100, complete with cache, along with the full hardware set of Creative’s 64 MB X-Fi Titanium HD.
The best memory latencies are usually accessible by placing only a single module on each memory channel, so Gigabyte docks the board to a mere four slots. The only thing really missing from making this the ultimate gaming-only platform is the absence of four-way CrossFireX or SLI support. But Gigabyte had to put that audio and network hardware somewhere. And besides, there's always that pistol-shaped chipset heat sink to admire.
Gigabyte finally listened to a few editors too, placing a BIOS selector switch on the I/O panel right below its automatic-overclocking OC button. Hidden beneath both of those is a rear-panel CLR_CMOS button.
Fewer connectors leave the G1.Assassin2 with fewer potential layout issues, and the board should fit nearly any ATX case designed for forward-facing SATA cables. Gigabyte paid special attention to the USB 3.0 header by moving it above the graphics cards—where its competitors usually place it—to avoid a repeat of past criticisms.

Yet, just when some might have thought this to be a perfect layout for gaming systems, Gigabyte throws in an added feature that can’t be used in conjunction with most three-way graphics builds. Its Bluetooth/Wi-Fi PCIe card requires a x1 slot that’s usually covered up by the heat sinks of high-performance graphics cards. The space that might have hosted a x1 slot non-obtrusively is filled by the Killer E2100 NIC, and x16 slot spacing issues that could cause the top card to run “hot” add to a package that’s best-completed with only two cards installed.

The G1.Assassin2’s installation kit includes CrossFire, SLI, and three-way SLI bridges, along with four SATA cables, the Wi-Fi kit, and a sheet-metal USB 3.0 drive bay adapter.
- Sandy Bridge-E And X79: The Best Intel Has To Offer
- ASRock X79 Extreme9
- X79 Extreme9 Firmware
- Asus P9X79 Deluxe
- Asus P9X79 WS
- Asus’ UEFI
- Gigabyte G1.Assassin2
- Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5
- Gigabyte’s UEFI
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: 3D Games
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- X79 Overclocking
- Which High-End X79 Motherboard Is Best?


You might want re check the facts.
Thanks.
How could that happen? ASRock has repeatedly removed previous BIOS versions from its website and labeled the replacement as the initial release.
This review was published after many hours of collaboration with ASRock, and some of the problems with this specific CPU are further detailed in the overclocking section. ASRock acknowledged the problem exists with a portion of the C1 CPU supply and has begun issuing patched BIOS to fix the multiplier issue, according to ASRock engineer William Yu.
Not to mention that they didnt say they couldnt hit 4.4ghz, they just stated they didnt get that high without going beyond 1.35v
Kinda wish we got to see a MAX overclock for air before temps got out of control =P
But then you get various coolers involved... yada yada... but PLEASE anyway
I had to comment on something. I can't really comment on the hardware as its so enthusiast and SB-E is well beyond my needs. I can't comment too much on the bios because I still barely understand mine, but I am seeing the trend that it might be best to stick with what you know, or risk having to translate the various names/definitions of settings across different products. I'm not that smart nor that patient. I liked the comment on the 6.00...lol... %! I never would have thought. I think that just deciphered half of my bios options, thanks. /wink
Just sayin'
Question does tht little fan on the motherboard get loud? If it does that would be a deal breaker for me
On a side note I would love to see how these boards look assembled
I am running 4.4GHz on 1.2V Revision C1 ASRock Extreme4 Bios 1.50. At 1.4V i can run 5.0Ghz but i don't have good enough cooler so i reverted back to 4.4.
I was wondering the same thing. I was about to purchase the rampage iv extreme then I saw this story. I was hoping to see it compaired with these boards. But, maybe it's in a league of its own.
It uses the same chipset and Asus doesn't differentiate integrated components on a per board testing basis. It will almost assuredly perform at the same level the other boards do, it just has a brand name unscaled cost and different tweak software.
In general, the entire x79 platform seems poorly executed to me. For having over twice the transistor count of a Sandy Bridge chip, the E line does not have performance to match that much of a die size increase, coupled with the base TDP being as high as it is, I would expect many more cores or much higher clocks out of them, especially considering they don't waste die space on integrated graphics.
That and the motherboards to go with the platform are all extremely overpriced. It is understandable that a new socket type has a lot of manufacturing overhead, and 4 channel RAM is magnitudes more complicated circuitry than dual channel, and having the PCI lanes support almost three times the bandwidth and channels is costly. But it isn't triple the price of a reasonable z68 motherboard costly.
The CPU is worse; for a total buy-in of $920+ (adds the cost of an i7-3930K) you can build a very nice system indeed, as the $1K SBM articles clearly show.
In today's economic climate, X79 may make sense for only a very few people. I'm not one of them, and while there's certainly no harm in reading about it, I doubt many regular Tom's readers are either.
Suckers!! haha
Which makes me wonder. If a 2600K can normally hit 4.8GHz on modest air cooling, and an i7 3960X is going to typically max out at around 4.4GHz with the same Vcore and cooling.... that's a 10% higher clock speed on the 2600K. The 3960X should perform about 20% faster at the same speed.... meaning... the difference is going to be what? 10% in favor of the 3960X.
So, 10% more performance for about 3 times the cost.
For anything but professional workstations, it seems that X79 doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Next year i'm getting a new LGA 2011 mobo and an "old" 2600K and spare some cash for a better GPU.
Greedy bastards...