Ask Me Anything - Official Gigabyte Representatives

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

What does Gigabyte make beside motherboard and graphic cards? Do Gigabyte plan on making other product such as PSU, CPU Cooler, Fan, etc.?

We have separate GIGABYTE business units that sell other PC components including servers, power supplies, chassis, notebooks and even mobile phones. Of course different regions sell the products they feel best fit their own region.

 

[lunaticwoda]

So two questions. First with vDroop I have experienced nothing but issues with the vDroop settings in the UD7 series of mobos. My quesiton being why did gigabyte choose to go with a scale of 0-10 for vdroop instead of a simpler solution such as provided by Asus? (Note I should'nt skyrocket from 1.41vcore at 5ghz and shoot to 1.54vcore

Second question. For a long time I have been wanting to see a awesome gaming/enthusiate class board with dual socket with dual QPI links. Is there any plans for anything like that? Think EVGA's SR-2 or the skulltrail boards but you know better

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

1. In certain motherboards there is likely a bios issue is causing dpc latency to be high in otherwise beautiful products. Is your software R&D team looking into those issues and releasing BIOS updates?
2. I love the feature sets with gigabyte (always getting something extra it seems) any inside hints on some of the nifty things to come in the higher end GB motherboards?

DPC latency issues can be caused by any number of things. We did notice that our EasyTune Windows-based overclocking does affect DPC due to the hardware polling for the system information. Often closing this application will fix the DPC issues. Our software team is looking into possible solutions.

We are always adding new and unique features to our motherboards. Currently our G1.Killer gaming motherboards for the 8 series have introduced the first OP-AMP socket on-board which allows users to customize their audio experience. I think in the future you will see some more unique things on the audio side. We've also launched a bunch of new features on our overclocking motherboards and of course you will always see us developing new technologies for the power delivery of our motherboards, ie. our Ultra Durable Technologies.

 

[funguseater]

Hi gigabyte

I really like the quality of your boards, been using them for years and they get better every year but I wonder if its possible to sell the different models VRM heatsinks as aftermarket parts, most models have the same/similar layout for cooling and spacing for the heatsink. Honestly I don't recommend the killer series to clients because of the noxious Green (unless they are 15, adults tend to look at me funny), I end up buying ud4's and not being completely happy with the builds. I've been asking for this for years and I hope other people will see the good in the idea and press for it. Thank you

Fungi

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

Gigabyte, will you guys to make a matx board that would be between the z87mx-d3h which is around 120 dollars and the sniper m5 which is around 200. There are many people who would like a good matx build but want something better than the mx boards but could not necessarily afford the g1 killer series

We do offer some micro-ATX boards that have different feature sets, including a Z77 board that has Thunderbolt on-board. But I don't think the US currently carries this motherboard. I will feedback to our US team that there is more demand for a mid-range micro-ATX boards. Hopefully in the future we can provide.

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

1. Gigabyte motherboards have a glass layer PCB. What is the purpose of this layer and does it dissipate heat better than motherboards without the glass layer PCB?

2. There are selected motherboard for build it yourself All in One such as the current Gigabyte GA-H77TN. Will you guys continue on making components for All in One platform?

1. This new glass fabric PCB design helps to prevent moisture from getting between the layers of the PCB which can cause electrical shorts. You can find out more here: http://www.gigabyte.us/microsite/297/images/overview.html

It doesn't reduce heat, that is what are 2X Copper PCB does, which doubles the amount of copper in the power and ground layers which helps to act as an internal heatsink in the motherboard.

2. Yes, we continue to support the AIO form factor (which follow Intel's thin mini-ITX design guidelines). Currently we have 2 thin mini-ITX motherboards on the market and we will be introducing some new motherboards in the upcoming future. We also sell some AIO chassis as well.

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

There's been a lot of talk about switching to BGA sockets especially from Intel, I'm not a fan of that happening since I like to be able to build my own computer.
Will Gigabyte continue to make LGA socket based motherboards or do you have no choice but to go with BGA? Is AMD onboard with BGA ? If AMD is not going to go that way could that force Intel to change their plans?

I think there was some confusion earlier in the year about this. Intel is still committed to socketed CPUs and we will continue to focus on socketed motherboards for the retail channel.

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

I have always loved the idea of an external GPU housing. I would love the ability to have a road warrior laptop that I could plug into a massive external power hungry GPU and big monitor at home. I know Gigabyte has done some work with external GPU's in the past. Are there any other plans to pursue external GPU technology??

This would be a question for our VGA team. We have notebook solutions that use an external graphics dock but I don't believe we currently have a solution on our VGA side. I'll pass along your suggestion though, as I agree, it would make a pretty cool way to boost your graphics performance.

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

Are there any plans in the future to make am3+ m itx boards?

We just launched our FM2 mini-ITX motherboard, and we are investigating the possibility of doing more small form fact motherboards for different AMD platforms.

 

[g-unit1111]

Since mATX and mITX systems are becoming more common than not, will Gigabyte be manufacturing more options for small form factor PCs like motherboards and GPUs?

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

Why the lime-green color on the high-end 'Killer' series of boards? I've always liked the features (and pricing's usually acceptable). but between the colors and the bullet design, I've always ended up choosing other manufacturers.

In short, does Gigabyte plan on expanding the range of colors for high-end boards (the orange in the OC haswell boards are interesting), or perhaps a complete color change like ASUS and MSI have done with some of their boards.

Color scheme is such a personal preference . The reason we did green is all of our competitors seemed to do red for that segment, and we wanted to differentiate ourselves. I think this 8 series launch, we have a wide variety of colors that hopefully will appeal to as many different tastes as possible. We have some green/black, orange/black, red/black, gold/black, blue/black. We are always open to hear suggestions.

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

Sorry guys. Got to get to bed now but thanks for all of the great questions. Henry and I will be back later this evening to answer more of your questions.

 

[knowom]

Would like to see Gigabyte make a DDR3 ramdisk around pci-e w/ like a port or ports for storage backups be it SD, USB, SATA, or all of the above.

 

[subtec]

The Mini-DTX motherboard form-factor is compatible with many mini-ITX chassis on the market, while potentially enabling the use of a sound card and GPU, or even SLI/Crossfire via its second PCIe slot. Does Gigabyte see a future in this "mini-ITX plus" form-factor, and do you have any plans to produce boards based on Mini-DTX?

Thanks.

 

[JPNpower]

The age of the gigabyte is coming to the end, or will sometime in the future.

Do you plan on changing your company name to TERABYTE anytime soon?

 

[jpishgar]

Thanks guys for the answer! I strongly encourage questions to continue in the interim.

To JPNpower, on behalf of "Tom's" Hardware, I can say it's not always important that the name be up to date or reflect current situations. American Telephone and Telegraph, Radio Shack, and Kentucky Fried Chicken might agree there.

 

[ekagori]

I noticed that aside the sniper line that uses a creative soundcore 3D chip, all other z87 boards use the Realtek ALC898 codec while competitors are using the newer ALC 1150 codec. Will we see some new Gigabyte motherboards with the new codec or do you feel that the sound upgrade over ALC 898 is not substantial enough to warrant its inclusion?

 

[g-unit1111]

Does Gigabyte have any interesting experimental GPU cooling solutions in the works similar to the Windforce 5X, or are five 80mm fans the most you can squeeze onto a GPU?

 

[amdfangirl]

Regarding AM3+ in Micro-ATX, I'm pretty sure that we don't currently see sufficient demand. AM3+ is pretty much squeezed into an enthusiast space where ATX seems a better fit, not least because it provides better multi-GPU options.

I actually have one of the few AM3+ mATX boards:

http://www.gigabyte.com.au/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3817#ov

I was wondering if Gigabyte plans to support Steamroller on the AM3+ 880G platform.

 

[Henry-GIGABYTE]

Would like to see Gigabyte make a DDR3 ramdisk around pci-e w/ like a port or ports for storage backups be it SD, USB, SATA, or all of the above.

Generally speaking, Ramdisks were popular at a time when mechanical hard drives were a serious bottleneck for extreme systems. But in the age of SSDs we see very little demand for Ramdisks. This especially true now that we've seen SSDs become cheaper and more accessible in the last year or so.

 

[bim27142]

Hello Team Gigabyte!

This is the same question (or probably suggestion) that I sent to you Sales team a few weeks back... this is just basically an inquiry if you are planning to release a Mini ITX version of Sniper 5 soon?

As you may have known, Asus already has a ROG Mini ITX motherboard and you know very well that these days, Mini ITX and SFF are selling like hot cakes. Better yet since Sniper 5 is your enthusiast/gaming oriented model, you should extend the Mini ITX design down to Ivy Bridge platform as most enthusiasts are really not keen on jumping to Haswell for apparent reasons.

I think Asus is really on the right track on providing discrete class quality audio on ITX boards as this is the only thing holding most people back from Mini ITX due to the absence of discrete quality on-board sound solutions which, ROG Mini ITX solved this by providing a daughter board for a discrete-quality sound solutions.

If there is one motherboard company that can go head to head with Asus, that is ONLY Gigabyte and I MEAN it with all my heart! You will have an edge if you do this since you guys are using a REAL Creative chip with replaceable OP AMPS while Asus only uses Realtek with emulated X-Fi functionality.

So I hope you will take this with serious considerations. This will surely propel you to the next level.

Thanks and more power Gigabyte!

 

[Henry-GIGABYTE]

The Mini-DTX motherboard form-factor is compatible with many mini-ITX chassis on the market, while potentially enabling the use of a sound card and GPU, or even SLI/Crossfire via its second PCIe slot. Does Gigabyte see a future in this "mini-ITX plus" form-factor, and do you have any plans to produce boards based on Mini-DTX?

Thanks.

It's interesting to hear someone talk about D-ITX again. I think the DIY PC market today , broadly speaking, is largely maintaining three form factor eco-systems; ATX, Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX. This means that chassis vendors in particular are developing products for these three form factors.

Mini-DTX sits in a very niche position, between Mini and Micro and thus never really achieved a stable eco-system. I can see the benefits as you explained, but for a form factor to really survive, it needs the support of the broader PC component industry.

 

[Henry-GIGABYTE]

Hello Team Gigabyte!

This is the same question (or probably suggestion) that I sent to you Sales team a few weeks back... this is just basically an inquiry if you are planning to release a Mini ITX version of Sniper 5 soon?

As you may have known, Asus already has a ROG Mini ITX motherboard and you know very well that these days, Mini ITX and SFF are selling like hot cakes. Better yet since Sniper 5 is your enthusiast/gaming oriented model, you should extend the Mini ITX design down to Ivy Bridge platform as most enthusiasts are really not keen on jumping to Haswell for apparent reasons.

I think Asus is really on the right track on providing discrete class quality audio on ITX boards as this is the only thing holding most people back from Mini ITX due to the absence of discrete quality on-board sound solutions which, ROG Mini ITX solved this by providing a daughter board for a discrete-quality sound solutions.

If there is one motherboard company that can go head to head with Asus, that is ONLY Gigabyte and I MEAN it with all my heart! You will have an edge if you do this since you guys are using a REAL Creative chip with replaceable OP AMPS while Asus only uses Realtek with emulated X-Fi functionality.

So I hope you will take this with serious considerations. This will surely propel you to the next level.

Thanks and more power Gigabyte!

Thanks for your question and obvious enthusiasm for gigabyte bim.

We recently moved our G1.Killer brand to Micro-ATX with last year's G1. Sniper M3. This was hugely popular. This year we've launched the G1. Sniper M5 which again is proving to be a big hit.

The idea that a real PC gaming board needs to be full size ATX, is now clearly gone and I think, as a company we've now come to appreciate and understand that.

A G1.Killer Mini-ITX board would of course seem the next logical step, and without saying too much, I can tell you that it is something being discussed internally.

 

[subtec]

It's interesting to hear someone talk about D-ITX again. I think the DIY PC market today , broadly speaking, is largely maintaining three form factor eco-systems; ATX, Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX. This means that chassis vendors in particular are developing products for these three form factors.

Mini-DTX sits in a very niche position, between Mini and Micro and thus never really achieved a stable eco-system. I can see the benefits as you explained, but for a form factor to really survive, it needs the support of the broader PC component industry.

Thanks for the response Henry. I would just reiterate that chassis compatibility for Mini-DTX is essentially a non-issue, since a large number of mini-ITX chassis already support mini-DTX simply by virtue of having two expansion slots. Mini-ITX cases that don't support dual expansion slots are limited to lower-power systems, so it stands to reason that Mini-DTX boards would be a better fit in the enthusiast/power user space.

Otherwise, PC components are largely the same between ATX/mATX/mITX. At the very least, anything that will fit mini-ITX will also fit M-DTX.

Thanks again.

 

[alxianthelast]

I'm a great fan of Gigabyte for a very long time and wonder if they plan to move into processors and software.. as in licensing ARM/Android to make PC motherboards with an integrated OS.

Context: way back in the dark days of BIOS, Ribbon cables, dead ram modules etc, it sucked to not have GUI access to FAT or NTFS drivers, or network. I wondered why gigabyte never put an OS into the motherboard to make troubleshooting easier. If I could I'd somehow connect my phone directly to my mobo or whatever computer I'm troubleshooting for quick direct access to everything especially for diagnostics, i.e. a mobo should have wifi built-in and be able to report to a phone. Such access is less relevant now that systems are so much more stable it is not an issue. Still IF I opted for another Gigabyte motherboard, I'd also want a Gigabyte android phone to go with it. Chances are I'd never need to connect that phone to the motherboard for configuration or troubleshooting, it would be lovely to have that feature.