Gigabyte on Friday introduced eight motherboards based on the Intel X99 chipset. These boards support the latest DDR4 memory as well as Intel's new i7 Extreme Edition processors. Gigabyte's arsenal includes three gaming boards, one SoC overclocking board and four Ultra Durable boards.
Gigabyte's long list of features include Durable Black solid caps and POSCAPS, 3-way and 4-way graphics configurations for up to 320 Gbps bandwidth, and dual M.2 technology with on-board Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. There's also a Turbo M.2 socket, an on-board SATA Express connector and a 30 micron-thick gold-plating over the 8 DIMM slots, the CPU socket and 4 PCIe slots.
One of the biggest fears about building a system is accidental damage when mounting the motherboard. With Gigabyte's new layout, those fears are minimized thanks to additional space around the mounting hole, and a wider copper ground pad.
"Gigabyte's exclusive 2X Copper PCBs design provides sufficient power trace paths between components to handle greater than normal power loads and to remove heat from the critical CPU power delivery area," the press release said. "This is essential to ensure the motherboard is able to handle the increased power loading that is necessary when overclocking."
On the audio front, the new boards include Creative's Sound Core3D quad-core audio processor and the Creative SBX Pro Studio audio suite software. There is also Realtek's ALC1150 high-performance multi-channel High Definition Audio Codec, which provides ten DAC channels that, when combined, will support 7.1-sound audio playback.
Gigabyte's new motherboards also sport new heatsink designs, LED lighting for the back panel LED and the audio guard light path, Q-Flash Plus (which allows users to update the BIOS with a flash drive), Killer E2200 networking, cFos Speed (a network traffic management application) and Thunderbolt connectivity.
For more information about the new motherboards, click on one of the links below:
Gaming
SOC
Ultra Durable
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