Overclocking
Overclocking is was accomplished by increasing the core voltage from 0.976V to 1.275V and upping the multiplier until the CPU can no longer complete the HandBrake run.
We actually put the original Gigabyte Gaming 5 back in to confirm the 50MHz frequency advantage for the micro-ATX offering. Sure enough, there's a repeatable overclocking differential between the two. Again, overclocking mileage, in our opinion, is still more reliant on the quality of the CPU rather than the specific motherboard implementation, assuming you're pushing the chip with regular air cooling.
The latest F2 BIOS also provides extra memory overclocking headroom on the same memory modules. Getting to 3,000MHz is no easy task on an X99 motherboard, due to the way in which Intel locks some of the fine-tuning parameters around, so it's good to see another board able to run super-fast memory.
And rounding out a good performance showing is the best power consumption figures, although a 7W-per-hour advantage will, at best, lead to only a few pounds saved every year.
