Ask Me Anything - Official Gigabyte Representatives

[jpishgar]

Tom's Hardware Ask Me Anything - Gigabyte
Ever wanted to ask one of the big hardware or software giants something directly? Why’d they do that? Where’d the idea come from for that last product? What’s in store next? Well, now you have the chance!

Tom’s Hardware is proud to announce the fourth of our brand new community features – ASK ME ANYTHING.

On Wednesday, July 24th, we’ll be hosting the fourth of a series of Tom’s Hardware Ask Me Anythings, and our guests will be official representatives from Gigabyte!

This thread will be unlocked, open and live for 24 hours starting at 12:00 noon eastern on July 24th, and questions will be moderated and supervised by Tom’s Community Manager, Joe Pishgar, and a full team of Senior Moderators.

Ask Me Anything Rules
• No tech support questions, as these require in-depth personal follow-up and diagnostics.
• All Rules of Conduct apply.
• Keep questions direct and to the point.
• Avoid opinion bias - ie: "Why are all your products awesome/bad/smelly?"
• Be respectful of our guests, no insults, no leading questions.
• Do not post duplicate questions, or repost your question multiple times.
• Not all questions may be answered. Questions may not be answered in the order in which they are received or posted.

Only registered users will be able to ask questions, so if you haven’t yet, be sure to register now for your chance to participate!

The official representatives will reply periodically over the time the AMA is active using a recognized and verified account.

Please join us on this date to throw your questions into the mix and ask Gigabyte what you've always wanted to ask!

What: Ask Me Anything – Gigabyte
When: Wednesday, July 24th, 12:00 p.m. Noon EDT
Where: This thread itself!
Who: Henry Kao, Vice President of Motherboards, Colin Brix, Director of Marketing.

Our Guests from Gigabyte are-

Name: Henry Kao
Username: Henry-GIGABYTE
Title: Vice President, Motherboard Business Unit
Bio: Mr. Henry Kao has been in the high-tech business for over 20 years, and made a name for himself helping to establish Sony in Taiwan. His current position is Vice President of the GIGABYTE Service & Marketing Center that includes global GIGABYTE motherboard sales. In the 10 years that he has been with GIGABYTE, he has been actively involved in R&D, purchasing, finance, product innovation, sales and marketing during a period of growth where GIGABYTE progressed from a tier 2 to a tier 1 motherboard brand. This extensive experience and success ensures Henry's position as supervisor of GIGABYTE's entire motherboard operations around the world.

Name: Colin Brix
Username: Colin-GIGABYTE
Title: Director of Marketing
Bio: Colin Brix has over 15 years technology industry experience, having relocated to Taiwan from the US 10 years ago. Making his start in Taiwan at VIA Technologies in their mini-ITX Embedded Platform Division, he later transitioned to their Global Chipset Marketing team. Colin has currently been at GIGABYTE for 7 years in the GIGABYTE Technical Marketing Team and is now Director for Marketing for their Motherboard Business Unit.

The AMA is now LIVE.

 

[RandyFuson]

What are you excited about in the new chipset? Did Haswell really open up any possibilities that weren't in Ivy bridge?

 

[beamj]

Hello,

Two quick questions.
1) When are we going to be able to purchase Z87 boards from Gigabyte with Thunderbolt ports. Current Z87 offerings do not have it.
2) Asus, your competitor, provides a plug in block for case connections (power button, HDD LED, Reset Button) that then plugs into the motherboard as a single item. This makes plugging those connections in much easier. Does Gigabyte offer something similar or is there something in the works.

 

[jpishgar]

A few coming in from Facebook and Twitter:

Will we be seeing Gigabyte design any Thin Mini-ITX-based platforms with discrete graphics?

Are there any plans to build a motherboard with Core i7-4770R for home theater enthusiasts?

Users, please note, because of the timezone difference (12 hours), Gigabyte's answers to questions may be delayed a few hours initially.

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

What are you excited about in the new chipset? Did Haswell really open up any possibilities that weren't in Ivy bridge?

The main advantages of Ivy over Sandy are performance. The graphics core itself has been improved around 30% and Ivy offers much better memory performance, as we are seeing over 4GHz overlocked memory on this platform, which we we weren't even close to on Sandy.

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

Hello,

Two quick questions.
1) When are we going to be able to purchase Z87 boards from Gigabyte with Thunderbolt ports. Current Z87 offerings do not have it.
2) Asus, your competitor, provides a plug in block for case connections (power button, HDD LED, Reset Button) that then plugs into the motherboard as a single item. This makes plugging those connections in much easier. Does Gigabyte offer something similar or is there something in the works.

1) Our Thunderbolt boards will make their appearance in August.
2) Currently we do not offer, but i agree it's a great idea. It has been discussed internally and hopefully we can offer something similar soon.

 

[Henry-GIGABYTE]

Hi everyone.

Thanks for having us today for this AMA session. It's a pleasure to be able to speak directly to Tom's forum members. I hope to my best to answer what questions you may have...

One small point however. I am currently located in Taiwan where it's half past midnight, so please forgive me if I disappear at some point. I will return later in the day.

Henry.

 

[inzone]

Please do not ask tech support related questions, this is stated in the rules at the top of this thread.

 

[Wisecracker]

Will there be any FM2+ 'Bolton' mini-ITX motherboards from Giga-Byte??

and

Will we see any mATX AM3+ motherboards from GB ??

 

[Colin-GIGABYTE]

A few coming in from Facebook and Twitter:

Will we be seeing Gigabyte design any Thin Mini-ITX-based platforms with discrete graphics?

Are there any plans to build a motherboard with Core i7-4770R for home theater enthusiasts?

Users, please note, because of the timezone difference (12 hours), Gigabyte's answers to questions may be delayed a few hours initially.

Most of our mini-ITX boards have a PCIe slot that you can add your own graphics card. Check out our latest Z87N-WiFi or H87N-WiFi

As for any motherboards with on-board Intel i7-4770R, since it is a BGA (non socketed) CPU, we don't currently have any plans to support as selling a high end non-socket board/CPU is difficult in the retail channel.

1. Our distributors would have to carry a large line of credit to purchase both board and CPU which is hard for some of our smaller customers.

2. Our customers like to be able to DIY their systems, so not being able to change their CPU would be a hard sell for us.

That said, we are trying to convince Intel to come out with a socketed CPU with Iris Pro graphics core.

 

[TheBigTroll]

ive a question about my g1 sniper 5 board

why does the fan control not work in easytune software
you guys really fix easytune because its giving the wrong information and doesnot work
im using 4 corsair sp 120 fans

and when you release the official bios for my board ? its beta now

and i saw a pic on facebook that you guys reach 4,8ghz on 1.18v
is it an engeneering sample or something
ive got a 4770k at only 4.2ghz stable at 1.18v i ve got a really expensive fully watercooled pc

haswell gets so hot

a answer would be awesome

i love your products gigabyte

cheerd

i can answer your second question. its all due to the silicon lottery

 

[Henry-GIGABYTE]

A few coming in from Facebook and Twitter:

Will we be seeing Gigabyte design any Thin Mini-ITX-based platforms with discrete graphics?

Are there any plans to build a motherboard with Core i7-4770R for home theater enthusiasts?

Users, please note, because of the timezone difference (12 hours), Gigabyte's answers to questions may be delayed a few hours initially.

As far as I know there are no discrete Thin Mini-ITX boards in the pipeline. The heat and cooling challenges of most discrete GPU solutions would certainly be a challenge in an AIO machine. I'm not sure there's too much demand for gaming AIO's generally.

Our current Z87N-WIFI and H87N-WIFI boards would be good fit for a home theatre build using a 4770R, or indeed a 4770T which has an even lower TDP of 45 watts.

 

[TheBigTroll]

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

 

[moulderhere]

When will gigabyte get into AMD G34 motherboard market for home users wanting work stations

 

[Henry-GIGABYTE]

Will there be any FM2+ 'Bolton' mini-ITX motherboards from Giga-Byte??

and

Will we see any mATX AM3+ motherboards from GB ??

We are currently offering a an new F2A885XN-WIFI board.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4611#ov

We showed it at Computex earlier this year and will get around to announcing officially it at some point in the very near future.

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.

 

[legendkiller]

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

 

[trhenning]

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?

 

[lp231]

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?

 

[eshepard]

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??

 

[TheBigTroll]

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?

i can help with the first question. The reason that gigabyte uses a glass fabric pcb is so that humidity does not affect the boards operation espeically in humid climates in southern Asia where the humidity can be high enough so that a regular board may have trouble functioning

 

[BulkZerker]

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

 

[vmem]

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.

 

[Saga Lout]

Quick reminder folks - our Gigabyte guests are in a time zone where it's 02:15 at the moment so they have gone for some sleep. Keep the questions coming but please be patient for the replies.

 

[inzone]

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?

 

[TheBigTroll]

well green is their gaming line of boards just like how msi has red for their gaming line. really based on the preference of the company.

the colours for gigabyte really originated in the x58 platform with their g1- assasin board being their first gaming/4way board and their overclocking board the x58-oc which was notorious for its massive vrm assembly, stripped down for overclocking features, and the records it broke