Introduction

I'm a big fan of the G1 series from GIGABYTE. I get that some of the design decisions aren't for everyone, but the bottom line is that in the feature department the G1 series are one of the most stacked series on the market. With more and more people pulling away from separate sound and networking cards, the addition of high end components in these areas on board are appreciated.

The latest addition to the G1 series from GIGABYTE comes in the form of the new G1.Assassin 2 and of course carries the much anticipated X79 chipset that we've been waiting for what feels like forever now.

While we're still just a little bit out from NDA, there's as usual a lot of things we can't tell you when it comes to the performance side of things, nor can we tell you some of the particular technologies implemented on the board.

On the other hand, there's a lot we can tell you. As usual, we'll be following our normal preview layout. We'll start by looking at the package of the board and then we'll move into the bundle which we're fortunately able to show you today. Once we've done that we'll then get into the board itself and take a closer look at some of the specifics that the new G1.Assassin 2 is offering.

That just about covers all that, so let's not delay any longer and just get into the package to see what GIGABYTE are offering us out of the box.

The Package

The box of the G1.Assassin 2 is really big and you can see we've got an absolute wealth of information on the box including the main features that the latest GIGABYTE board offers.

Moving inside the package, there's a bunch of paperwork included along with the normal Driver CD and a second that is for the WIFI card. Also here you can see our back I/O shield.

There's not heaps of cables included in the box with just four SATA cables. Along with that you can see we've got a CrossFire bridge along with an SLI one and a 3-Way SLI one.

One of the big new features to the GIGABYTE line of boards comes in the form of the new PCIe x1 card included in the package. The card above offers us both Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11n wireless technology. The WiFi tech isn't so much a surprise, but the new Bluetooth 4.0 technology is something that iPhone4 S users can enjoy for faster connectivity.

Along with all that, we've also got a two port USB 3.0 front panel header, a bunch of G1 stickers and a G1 inspired poster in the bundle. All in all, we've got a really strong bundle from GIGABYTE that can't be faulted.