Which of these motherboards is better?

[minimalist]

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4482#ov

 

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_Z87/

 

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87PRO/

[defunkt]

What would you be using it fot?

[Superarragon]

The Sabertooth and G.1 Sniper are both great, so get whichever one best fits your needs. Also keep in mind that the G.1 Sniper is Micro-ATX and the Sabertooth is ATX.

[SAV1OUR]

id get the sabertooth because im a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge sabertooth fanboy 

[minimalist]

What would you be using it fot?

Gaming, more specifically BF4.

The Sabertooth and G.1 Sniper are both great, so get whichever one best fits your needs. Also keep in mind that the G.1 Sniper is Micro-ATX and the Sabertooth is ATX.

Completely missed that!!!!! Wow, thanks!

[defunkt]

I'd go for the Sabertooth.

[Leonard]

I would get the Z87 - PRO or the Sniper. Not interested in the sabertooth.

[mgsstar]

I would go with the Sabertooth if you want a board that is reliable for long operations and want a 5 year warranty. But I would go with the Z87-PRO if you are just doing regular stuff on your machine.

[minimalist]

I would go with the Sabertooth if you want a board that is reliable for long operations and want a 5 year warranty. But I would go with the Z87-PRO if you are just doing regular stuff on your machine.

What about gaming for long periods of time? Like BF4 for 8-10 hrs straight? Sabertooth for that?

[mgsstar]

What about gaming for long periods of time? Like BF4 for 8-10 hrs straight? Sabertooth for that?

Its fine for 8-10 hours straight. When I mean long operations I mean like 24 hours on load with an overclocked cpu. But if you are just want to overclock and game and don't want many features like wifi, you could just get the Asus Z87-A.

[paulsterio]

Doesn't even matter, all Z87 boards perform the same, look at the layout, the looks and the features to distinguish. Unless you have a specific theme in mind, you need a particular set of IO (e.g. a certain number of SATA ports)...etc. I would just go for what is cheapest. 

 

 

I would go with the Sabertooth if you want a board that is reliable for long operations and want a 5 year warranty. But I would go with the Z87-PRO if you are just doing regular stuff on your machine.

 

Reliable for long operations? All consumer grade boards that are reasonably priced will have similar reliability and all boards can handle 24/7 operation. 

[mgsstar]

Doesn't even matter, all Z87 boards perform the same, look at the layout, the looks and the features to distinguish. Unless you have a specific theme in mind, you need a particular set of IO (e.g. a certain number of SATA ports)...etc. I would just go for what is cheapest. 

 

 

 

Reliable for long operations? All consumer grade boards that are reasonably priced will have similar reliability and all boards can handle 24/7 operation. 

I would agree with you on the first and second point. Sabertooth boards imo are more reliable than other boards because of the promise that they give about how their components are tested to high standards with the help of a 5 year warranty to prove it that it is a heavy duty board that will be able to handle pretty much anything you throw at it.

[Constantine]

I would agree with you on the first and second point. Sabertooth boards imo are more reliable than other boards because of the promise that they give about how their components are tested to high standards with the help of a 5 year warranty to prove it that it is a heavy duty board that will be able to handle pretty much anything you throw at it.

Not to mention military-grade power components should help with getting better OCs

[paulsterio]

I would agree with you on the first and second point. Sabertooth boards imo are more reliable than other boards because of the promise that they give about how their components are tested to high standards with the help of a 5 year warranty to prove it that it is a heavy duty board that will be able to handle pretty much anything you throw at it.

 

Yeah, but you're paying a massive price premium for it though. Sometimes what happens (especially amongst enthusiasts) is that they overspend on something which will ultimately be replaced in like 2 years time. 

 

 

Not to mention military-grade power components should help with getting better OCs

 

Not much, you might get 100 - 200 MHz more at max, which is like 3%. 

 

Anyway, I still think that buying a Sabertooth board because you like the look is okay, but buying it because it is supposedly more reliable is questionable. At the end of the day, I wouldn't pay more for components that are more reliable, unless they are power supplies. It's like the whole "buy ASUS graphics cards, don't buy Powercolor...etc", even though there are no statistics to show that ASUS cards are more reliable and even if they were, the markup has to reflect how more reliable it is, e.g. if the ASUS card is 10% more reliable, it should be marked up 10%, usually the markup is higher than the reliability added, if any. 

[Constantine]

... the markup has to reflect how more reliable it is, e.g. if the ASUS card is 10% more reliable, it should be marked up 10%, usually the markup is higher than the reliability added, if any. 

 

In an ideal world this would be true, but warranty costs increase exponentially for every year after the first year. The massive price premium also comes from using high quality high precision parts; In manufacturing for every small gain in precision, you gain an exponential increase in cost. One of my old lecturers had a saying "Zero manufacturing tolerance (maximum precision) is equal to infinite cost" 

 

If there's ever a good example of paying extremely high premiums for high quality parts for small accurate gains, the audiophile community is right under your nose. 

[paulsterio]

In an ideal world this would be true, but warranty costs increase exponentially for every year after the first year. The massive price premium also comes from using high quality high precision parts; In manufacturing for every small gain in precision, you gain an exponential increase in cost. One of my old lecturers had a saying "Zero manufacturing tolerance (maximum precision) is equal to infinite cost" 

 

If there's ever a good example of paying extremely high premiums for high quality parts for small accurate gains, the audiophile community is right under your nose. 

 

Yes, I completely agree with you, which is why in an actuarial sense, it doesn't make much sense to buy into the warranty claim. 

 

Let's say we have motherboard A. It can come with no warranty for $100 or with a 1 year warranty for a certain amount. Let's say that the failure rate of A within that year is 10%. Let us also assume, for the sake of calculations, that there is no profit, it costs the company $100 to make A and it will sell A for $100. 

 

Okay, so the manufacturer of the board, let's say they sell 100 of these boards. They get $10,000 and out of those 100, the expected value of failure is 10. 

 

Now how much should they charge, in order for it to be fair, if the 10 boards that failed must now be replaced? So now their expenditure is $11,000 (110 boards) and they only "sold" 100. So they should now charge $110 for the "warranty". 

 

If they charged $120, this means the customer is being overcharged. However, the benefit they get for this overcharging is a reduction in variance. In that the risk is significantly reduced. Since consumers often have shallower wallets than the companies that make these products, the consumer is more sensitive to risk (i.e. more risk averse) and wants smaller variance. It's actually very similar to the concept of hedging and options. 

 

Of course this is not perfect. In the real world, it depends on their costs, allocated costs and profits as well. This is actually my area (actuarial science) and it isn't too different to insurance premiums, e.g. how much markup on a health premium there would be for a smoker. The principal which I used above is called the zero-sum principle. 

 

Anyway, that was all an aside and I can completely understand where you are coming from. But I think the extra warranty is irrelevant anyway, considering nobody I know really keeps motherboards for five years anyway. 

[Constantine]

Anyway, that was all an aside and I can completely understand where you are coming from. But I think the extra warranty is irrelevant anyway, considering nobody I know really keeps motherboards for five years anyway. 

 

Testify! I agree completely, nowadays extended warranties feel like a "might as well" extra that they throw in with the bundle. I don't even know anybody that keeps receipts for more than 2 years (maybe my mother) and even then if you hold them to that promise they probably already phased the model out of production.

[Faa]

A sabertooth is just a normal z87 asus board with armor with tons of gimmicks. It's not a even a tiny bit more reliable.

[minimalist]

Doesn't the sabretooth come with a lot more controls though? Heat sensors, fan controls, etc to monitor your system.