As the gaming-centric member of GIGABYTE’s lineup of Champion Series motherboards, the X99-GAMING 5P is actually a new take on an old favorite — as old as any LGA 2011-3 motherboard can get, that is. This board is actually nearly identical to the X99-GAMING 5 motherboard that the company launched earlier this year. In addition to the P suffix appended to the end of this motherboard’s model name, GIGABYTE widened the board from 9.6 inches to 10.3 inches, making it an E-ATX form factor board. In doing so, GIGABYTE was able to tweak things here and there and offer enthusiasts a more compelling piece of hardware.
If you’re looking at an X99 platform, then memory bandwidth is very important to you, which is why improved and enhanced memory support tops the list of goodies GIGABYTE ported from the X99-SOC Champion to this motherboard. In addition to the stock DDR4-2133 support among the board’s eight DIMM slots, new XMP profiles let users install and run a handful of high-end modules at up to 3,333MHz for better performance in memory-intensive workloads. This board supports RDIMM memory, which lets you run 16GB DIMMs, for a total of up to 128GB of memory in your system.
Another new feature that this board has on its résumé is an improved socket, with pins for each of the New Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processor’s pads. Those extra 72 pins enable the processor to improve cache access times and reduce the voltage requirements for the onboard memory controller when running overclocked memory. The aptly named CPU Mode switch has two positions: its default setting, which is the Intel-certified socket configuration, and the OC mode position, which enables those extra pins. All the manual says about using the switch is that you may experience incompatibility issues, though we didn’t run into any problems.
System fan headers on the bottom edge of the motherboard have been moved closer to the right side of the board and the internal USB 3.0 header has been moved adjacent to the 24-pin ATX power connector, which both seem like solid design choices. Aside from these changes, there’s very little to differentiate this board from the older one, but many of the features that have been carried over are worth noting.
GIGABYTE’s Amp-Up Audio technology is a big draw for gamers and media fanatics, and it’s back. This suite of features consists of the Creative Sound Core3D quad-core audio processor (covered in an attractive gold jacket), Bi-polarized Nichicon audio capacitors, an upgradeable OP-AMP (operational amplifier), gold-plated audio jacks on the I/O panel, and a front headphone/speaker amplifier that supports studio-quality 600ohm devices at the flip of a switch. We also love the audio guard light path, LED-lit PCH heatsink, and the rear panel backlighting.
The storage system on the X99-GAMING 5P is also worth talking about. There are a total of 10 6Gbps SATA ports, one SATA Express port, and a 10Gbps M.2 port for type-2242/2260/2280 storage devices.
Gamers will be happy to learn that this board supports both NVIDIA’s SLI and AMD’s CrossFire technologies. For those installing a Haswell-E with 40 PCIe lanes on offer (the Core i7-5960X or 5930K), this board delivers graphics bandwidth up to 320Gbps instead of the stock 256Gbps, thanks to GIGABYTE’s inclusion of an onboard external clock generator and the direct (switchless) connection of one of the x16 lanes to the CPU. This lets you run a 4-way SLI or CrossFire setup at x8/x8/x16/x8, and a 3-way setup at x16/x16/x8. There’s a supplemental 4-pin Molex connector on the bottom of the board to make sure you have enough juice to handle such a configuration.
In addition to the audio ports we already mentioned, six USB 3.0 ports (one of which is a Q-Flash BIOS-flashing port), four USB 2.0 ports, and an S/PDIF output, the back panel features an RJ-45 port that connects to a Killer E2200 controller. With the included software, you get Gigabit Ethernet that puts the most latencysensitive applications at the front of the line to reduce lag in games and multimedia applications.
This wouldn’t be a GIGABYTE motherboard if it weren’t Ultra Durable. This board was built with 10,000-hour solidstate Durable Black capacitors; 30-micronthick gold plating on the PCIe, DIMM, and CPU pins; a 2-ounce copper PCB; server level chokes; and Digital PWM and PowIRstage ICs from International Rectifier. The latter are designed to deliver laser-accurate current sensing to regulate the thermal loading across all stages, which makes your board overclock better and run more reliably for a long time.
When it came time to put up or shut up, the system scored a solid 15,745 score in 3DMark’s Physics test, which is a good indicator of the CPU performance and memory throughput in a gaming worst case scenario. Other highlights include the 1,321 points from Cinebench, 2,677.32 pixels per second in POV-Ray, and Dhrystone and Whetstone scores of 288.26GIPS and 163.31GFLOPS, respectively.
If you’re in the market for a durable and attractive X99 motherboard with lots of extras for gamers and overclockers, the X99-GAMING 5P is a surefire winner. BY ANDREW LEIBMAN
Specs
Max Memory: 128GB DDR4 (DDR4-2133; Max OC: DDR4-3333)
Slots: 4 PCIe 3.0 x16, 3 PCIe 2.0 x1, 1 M.2 Wi-Fi Connector
Storage: 10 6Gbps SATA, 1 SATA Express, 1 M.2 (type 2242/2260/2280)
Rear I/O: 2 PS/2, 6 USB 3.0, 4 USB 2.0, audio I/O, 1 optical S/PDIF out, 1 Ethernet
Form Factor: E-ATX
Warranty: 3 years