Gigabyte G1 Sniper A88X review

On the rear panel, the G1 Sniper has plenty of ports and Gigabyte has placed a special emphasis on improving its sound support. On top of its optical S/PDIF optical output and five 3.5mm audio jacks for 7.1 surround sound, there’s also a gold-plated USB2 port that’s been especially designed to connect to a DAC, cutting down on noise to deliver enhanced audio. Well, that’s if you believe that the connector on a purely digital interconnect can make any difference to sound quality. There’s also a PS/2 port and a Gigabit Ethernet port.

We were disappointed that there were only two USB3 ports to be found with its five USB2 ports, but there’s a USB3 header on the front of the board for an additional two USB3 ports if your case layout allows for it.

We tested the G1 Sniper A88X with an AMD A10-7850K processor and 4GB of DDR3 RAM running at 1,600MHz and it scored 71 overall. This is roughly what we’d expect to see from this setup,

At £80, the G1 Sniper A88X is a good price for a mid-range board, but you’re not getting much more for your money than the cheaper Asus A88XM-PLUS. Unless you specifically need the extra space an ATX motherboard gives you, go for the A88XM-Plus instead.