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G1 Assassin Review - Performance (Part 2 of 2)
G1 Assassin Review- Performance.
For a true in depth motherboard review it is important to focus on not only CPU/RAM/GPU benchmarks, but also the unique features each board has. For many motherboards this would be USB 3.0, SATA6G, maybe an NF200, and some nice power delivery. This board has a powerful 16 phase VRM, tons of USB 3.0, and the fastest add on SATA6G; but the Bigfoot Killer NIC and Creative X-Fi really are two great features that have been embedded deep inside this boards PCB and they deserve a fair examination. It is very hard to benchmark or test audio without the proper equipment (which sadly I do not have), it will be up to personal taste to talk about its many aspects. The Bigfoot NIC on the other hand has built in software that measures ping and even FPS among other things, the best part is that this software can be installed on other systems without the NIC, and can provide ping and FPS results. Before we begin I would like to highlight that while this board is not made for Overclockers, it overclocks pretty well. I used a nice air-cooler for all overclocking and benchmarks and I used two CPUs i7 930 and i7990X as well as my good old X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 for comparison.
I have already done a physical review of this board, so if you want to know how the board works and what every major chip does and the odds and ends of the board please follow this link: G1 Assassin Physical Review
I will section this performance review into a few segments:
#1 Overview of the board and functions.
#2 Bigfoot e2100 vs. Realtek 8111E and Creative 20K2
#3 Included Software
#4 Overclocking Results and Test Setup
#5 Benchmark Results
#6 SATA6G Comparisons
#7 Power Consumption and Load Line Calibration
#8 Conclusion
Here are the differences between the G1 Assassin, Sniper, and Guerilla:
Overview of the Board and Functions:
It is very self-explanatory, but seeing the features in action is even a bit better. Here are some shots of the LEDs in the dark:
Here you can see the G1 LEDs built into the heatsink and the frequency and phase LEDs. The LEDs in general are a great indicator of temperature and voltage, just like they are supposed to be. It is better to use software to monitor temperature and voltage, physical measurements would even be better. Just know that when your board is lit up like a Christmas tree you should either be proud or worried. The user does have the option of turning off all the lights.
The OC panel is a really great thing, personally I used to be really big into case modding, and I would have loved to have a front panel OC button. This board in particular has a front panel OC button, while the other boards in this series have a back panel one. The front panel bezel has 2x USB 3.0 and 1x eSATA and USB 2.0 ports as well as the OC button which increases BLCK by 7 MHz even. This can provide about 200mhz overclock depending on the CPU multiplier.
The math is simple because 133MHz is always the stock bus speed. If you have an i7 930 processor it is rated at 2800 MHz, you take that and divide by 133MHz and you get a multiplier of 21x. Now multiply 21x by your new 140MHz and you get 2940MHz. About 150MHz overclock. On the other hand if you have an i7 950 you have a 23x multiplier so 140 blck would land you with 3220MHz, which is over 200MHz increase. A 7MHz increase in baseclock (BLCK) is not hard to achieve, it requires no voltage increase, so you can try the OC panel and get into overclocking, because this board overclocks like a champ.
While this board is ATX-XL form factor and only fits in a handful of cases it does give the user more than enough room for every component. We have extra spacing between the CPU cooler and the RAM slots so that you can fit an oversized CPU cooler and a fan on the side that the RAM lies on:
This also means you can fit those fancy heatsinks for the RAM, and even an extra RAM fan that comes with some high-end kits.
Moving on to the PCI-E spacing; two triple slotted GPUs will fit easily into the 16x PCI-E slots. Also note that there is enough room between the RAM latches and the first GPU so that you can replace RAM without having to remove the GPU:
Bigfoot Killer e2100 vs Realtek 8111E
Now it is important to say that the G1 Assassin has the Bigfoot Killer e2100 and that the X58A-UD5 rev 2.0 has the Realtek 8111E. Both systems used an i7 930 in these next benchmarks.
One of the greatest things about this network controller is its software (you can use the software on non-killer systems, but only the ping and FPS monitoring work):
Above you can see how different programs have different priorities. While every game will automatically be set to priority #1, I had a little issue.
Steam + e2100 + Verizon FIOS problem/fix!
After being kicked out of every sever I tried to join within 3 minutes of joining, I had to contact Bigfoot customer service after I contacted EA customer service. First off they were very helpful and walked me through many steps to try and get everything figured out. They even have a built in system diagnosis tool which generates a file that can be used by Bigfoot to diagnose the problem. Sadly nothing worked, and finally I found out why. I was asked about my ISP, and I replied Verizon FIOS 15mb/s download and 3mb/s upload. There is a known problem with the Bigfoot NIC and Verizon FIOS service in particular. When the user tries to use Steam to play a game, the game is set to priority #1; the fix is to set priority #2 if you are in my exact shoes. That is it! Find the game and set it to priority #2 if you have Verizon FIOS and are using Steam. Bigfoot said they are taking care of this problem and it should be fixed in a matter of weeks.
Moving on to other aspects of the program, it logs information on many different statistics all at the same time, and you have the ability to save a log:
We also have advanced settings and network settings, which can be very useful. The program automatically optimizes your computers network:
Now here is the difference between UDP and ICP Ping from Bigfoot Networks:
Now while it is not obvious from the graph which is better, I had Excel do an average of each set of FPS:
Bigfoot: 157.2745 FPS
Realtek: 148.7255 FPS
The winner is easily the G1 Assassin with the Bigfoot Killer e2100
The Creative 20K2 XF-I and 5 Audio Amplifiers:
Other than game mode we have entertainment mode and audio creation mode:
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