Gigabyte G1 z170 Gaming 3 vs Gaming 5

Gulltoppr

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May 25, 2014
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How big is the difference between the Gigabyte G1 Gaming 3 and Gaming 5 (z170) motherboards?

I took a look at the Gaming 3 and Gaming 5 pages on Gigabyte's site and the only differences I was able to spot were:

  • Gaming 5 has an additional Intel Gaming network chip
    The audio sockets on Gaming 5 seem to be gold-plated
    Different display ports (HDMI & Display port on G5 vs VGA & DVI on G3)
And other stuff such as OC Button, more USB ports and more BIOS memory on the G5.

Anyway, my main concern is about the additional Intel Gaming LAN chip on the G5 board. Why is it needed and what benefit does it bring over the G3?

The difference between the two boards seems so insignificant yet the price in my country is about 40€ higher for the G5. Is it worth it?
 
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One more difference are the power phases, the gaming 5 has 12 while the gaming 3 has 8. I was looking at this earlier and haven't heard too much about it with the z170 chipset being so new. However the boards seem to be upping the power phases quite a bit. Not sure if it's overkill or if it's something to do with the more granular baseclock adjustments, the 14nm process being more touchy about power delivery or what the deal is. The gaming g1 board features 22 power phases and comes with a premium pricetag to match (around $400 on sale). The asus z170-a bumped their power phases from 4 on the z97 to 8 on the new boards as well, so it's not just gigabyte.

Odd that they disabled lan teaming, it was previously available on dual lan...
Not sure what the purpose of the extra NIC on the G5 is, since the specs page explicitly says teaming is not supported. Usually with two NICs you can configure them to do things like link aggregation or failover, but in this case you can't even do that.

Anyway, if you don't need the extra USB ports/OC features on the G5, I say save yourself the 40 euros and get the G3.
 
One more difference are the power phases, the gaming 5 has 12 while the gaming 3 has 8. I was looking at this earlier and haven't heard too much about it with the z170 chipset being so new. However the boards seem to be upping the power phases quite a bit. Not sure if it's overkill or if it's something to do with the more granular baseclock adjustments, the 14nm process being more touchy about power delivery or what the deal is. The gaming g1 board features 22 power phases and comes with a premium pricetag to match (around $400 on sale). The asus z170-a bumped their power phases from 4 on the z97 to 8 on the new boards as well, so it's not just gigabyte.

Odd that they disabled lan teaming, it was previously available on dual lan gigabyte boards. Maybe enough people complained and skipped the boards that offered only the killer networking in favor of the intel lan that gigabyte gave users a choice. I know when I bought my motherboards it's one of the reasons I went with the z97 ud5h, the more budget boards only had the killer networking. Even without using the teaming feature I prefer the intel nic's.
 
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