The GIGABYTE B360 Gaming 3 WIFI Review: A Cheaper Alternative at $120
by Joe Shields on July 11, 2018 9:45 AM ESTGaming Performance
AoTS Escalation
Ashes of the Singularity is a Real Time Strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The original AoTS was released back in March of 2016 while the standalone expansion pack, Escalation, was released in November of 2016 adding more structures, maps, and units. We use this specific benchmark as it relies on both a good GPU as well as on the CPU in order to get the most frames per second. This balance is able to better display any system differences in gaming as opposed to a more GPU heavy title where the CPU and system don't matter quite as much. We use the default "Crazy" in-game settings using the DX11 rendering path in both 1080p and 4K UHD resolutions. The benchmark is run four times and the results averaged then plugged into the graph.
For the AOTSe results in 1080p, the B360 board ran with an average of 43 FPS. This result places it among its peers within about 1 FPS from most results in a pretty tight group. 4K UHD results placed the board right in the middle of the pack. Nothing is out of place here.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.
One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
The Rise of the Tomb Raider results has the B360 Gaming 3 WIFI producing 36.8 FPS in the 4K UHD testing and 88.1 at 1080p. The 1080p result is a couple of FPS behind the group, like the H370N, similar to how our WinRAR testing was slow. This means that the benchmark is likely affected by a memory issue, which we've only see on on some GIGABYTE boards so far.
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drw28 - Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - link
can you review the gigabyte UD pro drives?the combination of phison s10 and toshiba's bics nand would be interesting to see.peevee - Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - link
There used to be you could get a decent ATX MB for the latest mainstream CPU for around $50. What happened? Is it Intel overpricing their chipsets?imaheadcase - Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - link
In what world did you visit to get that cheap..i think you are mistaken.DanNeely - Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - link
In aggressive sales perhaps. Otherwise, while I recall seeing an occasional $50 board; the reviews always indicated that there was something wrong with them. Either from a company known to only build garbage (eg PC Chips, ECS before they figured out how to make good products, or a few other companies who're dead and forgotten) or an occasional screwed up board from a mainstream brand. I remember getting an ASUS S939 board for maybe $60 years ago, when it crapped out and I looked at reviews I turned out that I wasn't alone, something like 50% 1/2 stars from people whose boards had died on them.The True Morbus - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
I think there used to a PERCEPTION that you could get a decent board for 50 bucks, but that's probably because most 150$ boards looked similar to most 50$ boards.You can still buy the 50$ boards if you want. They'll be the first thing to give out in the build, you can write that down. And no, it doesn't matter if they're from a famous brand, they'll likely give out even quicker if that's the case.
PeachNCream - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
The last $50 motherboard I purchased was a Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-HD2 which was a FM2 socket mATX board. The SATA connectors all failed at the same time about three months after I bought it. There was a DVD drive on one and a 1TB WD hard drive on another when it gave up and stopped detecting devices. I tried a few other drives, shuffled ports around, got new cables, etc and the hard drive worked in an external case just fine (still is working in fact). It wasn't worth the trouble to go through customer support for RMA, but it was a bit annoying. That was the last time I wasted effort on a desktop of any sort and PC games for the most part as well. Glad to be done with that particular disaster after multiple decades of chasing system requirements. Cell phone gaming FTW!peevee - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
My last personal builds were in 2000 (on ASUS) and 2011 (ASRock). Never failed. Maybe they were 50-something.peevee - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
The latter is the Z68 board I still use. With then brand-new top-of-the-consumer-line i7-2600k.Still OCZ Vertex 3 256GB bought for $500 then, still works (although until they have fixed its firmware about a year later it had troubles). Now THAT one still alive is a surprise.
Galcobar - Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - link
Some copy editing might be in order. Aside from the raft of grammatical errors (e.g. worth vs worthy of), random commas and typos (e.g. B350, i7-8400), specifications are contradictory.For example, page 1: "... a total [of] four USB 2.0 ports, three USB 3.0 ports (one Type-C), and one USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) port (red Type-A)."
Page 2: "USB 2.0 (4x ports), USB 3.0 (3x ports) and a USB 3.1 Type-C port"
Also, when did Anandtech switch (back) to referring to USB 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 2 as, respectively, USB 3.0 and 3.1? Five days ago it was the former.
Joe Shields - Wednesday, July 11, 2018 - link
The typo mentioned RE: USB was corrected. Thank you for catching that.As far as the 'switch'.... I know in my reviews, at least the past dozen or two, I have been referring to it in this manner consistently AFAIK. Prior to that I would use something like "USB 3.1 (speed here)" to clarify.