It’s seems like our G1.Sniper 2 is winning friends and accolades wherever it goes, collecting yet another award this week from TweakTown.com. Veteran motherboard reviewer Shane Baxtor has seen it all. I mean this guy has forgotten more about motherboards than many of us will ever know. He put the G1.Sniper 2 through its paces, comparing directly to the closest competitor offering (Maximum IV or something, I forget the name….) and it clearly performed extremely well, coming out in front for the majority of benchmarks, while impressing Shane with its distinctively ‘gaming oriented’ spec:

“What I like about the board on a whole, though, is the fact that it caters to a market that isn't really catered to much. The gamer! While of course there are so many boards out there that suit gamers, it's the extras like the X-Fi audio and Killer networking that makes it stand out more than other boards. The overall look is also very gamer friendly with no doubt one of the largest, if not the largest genre of PC Gaming being First Person Shooters.

The G1.Sniper2, though, is just a really good performing board that has features that separate it from a lot of its competition on the market. Again, though, it's just nice to see GIGABYTE expand this G1.Killer series of boards onto another chipset.”

As always we suggest that you hop on over to TweakTown and peruse the full review for yourself. Plenty of benchies and whatnot to study.

More info about the G1.Sniper 2 can be found here.

Here at GIGABYTE, we just announced Ultra Durable 4 Classic, a series of features that mean you’re getting the absolute maximum durability and longevity for your DIY PC build. With Ultra Durable 4 Classic there are four main technology areas that cover all manner of potential threats to your PC; Humidity Protection, Electrostatic Protection, Power Failure Protection, and High Temperature Protection.

I want to just hone in on Humidity Protection for a moment, and particularly the new Glass Fabric PCB technology that drives it. Ultra Durable 4 Classic motherboards are all manufactured using a new kind PCB process that actually helps protect the motherboard from moisture at the PCB level, with improvements to how the actual PCB structure is manufactured.

The problem with traditional PCB manufacturing is a process known as Conductive Anodic Filament. or CAF. This basically describes a situation where the copper conductive filament forms a laminate dielectric between the adjacent conductors. This can be a major source of electrical failure and is believed to be caused primarily by humidity or moisture, which causes a hydrolytic reaction with the copper within the motherboard overtime. Moisture is thought to enter the PCB via the holes in the board where IC components are attached.

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 4 Classic motherboards use a new kind PCB manufacturing that allows for a finer glass fiber weave that makes it much more difficult for moisture to penetrate, even when holes are made to mount components. Take a look at the diagram below, you can see fiberglass substrates are made up of a woven fiberglass materials. On the left you see traditional PCB with larger gaps or spaces, while on the right you can see the improved glass fabric PCB manufactured using the new process.

In the lower section of the diagram above you can also how the PCB weave is made thinner and flatter in the example on the right. This also helps to make the PCB more resistant to CAF and electrical shorting. Check out the image below, which is an artistic rendition that show more clearly the advantages of the new Glass Fiber PCB. You can see how the finer weave facilitates a flatter, tighter result which again, prevents moisture penetration and eventual shorting.

 

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 4 Classic, including this new glass fiber technology is currently being offered on a number of our Intel H61-based motherboards, and it’s something that will be extended to offer on more motherboards in the future. It’s something that we hope our customers will appreciate

For more information about Ultra Durable 4 Classic, visit the website here.

To read a press release announcing Ultra Durable 4 Classic, click here.

 

Digitimes reports this week that GIGABYTE and Asustek are engaging in fierce competition over motherboard warranties in China. Despite the negativity that usually accompanies the words ‘fierce competition’, we feel that this move is a step in the right direction in that it encourages positive competition where industry leaders use the quality and reliability of their products to compete, rather than focusing on reducing the quality and reliability in order to simply undercut the competition. An example of this kind of negative competition can be found in the current notebook PC market as it spirals in a lethal race to the bottom – clearly, nobody wins in a race to the bottom because negative profits translate to unsustainable business. The result is that quality focused vendors pull out of the market or spin off their PC businesses in order to focus on more profitable projects.

Getting back to the 4 year warranty, every motherboard vendor knows that the main causes of RMA (after sales service issues) are BIOS problems (e.g. from power failure during booting up), capacitor and other power phase component failure, and blown fuses from external connectors such as USB and LAN ports. GIGABYTE has this covered with:

1. Dual BIOS (scroll down to the Dual BIOS section)

2. Japanese solid capacitors together with the rest of the Ultra Durable features 

3. 1 fuse per USB port 

These features primarily give us the confidence to initiate a 4 year warranty in China, and we hope to expand this to other regions as our distribution partners come onboard with the idea.

We have also recently released our Ultra Durable 4 specification that includes Humidity Protection, Electrostatic Protection, Power Failure Protection and High Temperature Protection. Check out the press release and microsite for more details on the desktop PC motherboard market’s newest quality and reliability specifications.

Hot on the heels of scoring 5 out of 5 at NinjaLane.com, the GIGABYTE G1. Sniper 2 is continuing to impress, earning a Gold Award at HiTechLegion.com. Reviewer Ron Perillo even felt compelled to draw comparisons from Roman history, with Julius Caesar’s determination to cross the Rhine an aptly fitting analogy for our own search for motherboard gaming glory:

“During the Gallic War, Julius Caesar had his engineers build a bridge within 10 days over the Rhine river so 40,000 soldiers and their horses could cross and continue pursuit. They maximized the odds to their favor by eliminating all possible variables of loss and leaving very little to chance in order to guarantee victory. Momentum is important during war and delays between strikes gives more time for the enemy to regroup and counter-attack. In the world of e-sports and gaming, this kind of winning attitude is equally important to dominating battles.”

- Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 Z68 Motherboard Review – Ron Perillo

But historical comparisons aside, Ron also found time to cover the features and technologies of the G1.Sniper 2 in consummate depth with these two videos. The first is a good look at the board itself, the reprise focusing on the BIOS and overclocking.