Over at the Taipei headquarters Gigabyte G1.Sniper 5 and G1.Sniper M5 Motherboards, you know the socket LGA1150 Haswell ones. At an AMP Up demo key feature that Gigabyte chose to highlight during this event was the new and innovative way they have decided to implement high quality sound at minimal cost to the consumer. 

The G1.Sniper 5 (and M5) will be the first motherboards to feature built in Creative Sound Blaster x-fi (20k2), Sound Core 3D and Upgradeable Op-Amp Sockets.The motherboard will also have Nichicon high end audio capacitors, gold plated connectors for input/output sockets and a built in gaming headphone amplifier. All of these features are designed to improve the quality of sound over traditional motherboard audio, specifically in gaming, without having to purchase a stand-alone sound card. AMP-UP audio subsystem, what GIGABYTE called the press over to its offices for, is a combination of Creative Sound Core3D chip, audio-grade electrolytic capacitors, and a user-replaceable OP-AMP chip for the front-channel.

The G1.Sniper 5 features 16-phase VRM and ferrite-core chokes. The driver-MOSFETs on the board are actively cooled  which also has a liquid channel running through it. Expect a PLX PEX8747 48-lane PCI-Express 3.0 bridge chip. This chip gets you 4-way SLI/CrossFireX support.

The G1.Sniper 5 seems to have four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slotswith three PCI-Express x1 slots take space in between them. You'll spot ten internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports, six from the Z87 PCH, four from third-party controllers. Then  AMP-UP 7.1-channel audio (detailed below), a Qualcomm/Bigfoot Killer K2000 and Realtek RTL8111F gigabit Ethernet interfaces, ten USB 3.0 ports (six on the rear panel, four by headers), dual-HDMI and DisplayPort display outputs, and legacy PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo connector.

The photo's are courtesy of Tweaktown and Hardwareheaven below.

GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 5 and G1.Sniper M5 Motherboards Shown