“Intel is pleased to see GIGABYTE extend its G1-Killer series to the high performance Intel® Z68 Chipset platform”, said Zane Ball, General Manager of Intel Desktop Platforms. “In combination with our 2nd generation Intel® Core™ processors, the new GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 2 motherboard will offer an incredibly potent platform for today’s hardcore gamers.”

“We’re excited to continue our great working relationship with GIGABYTE to give gamers the competitive advantage of Sound Blaster audio on the G1.Sniper 2 Gaming Motherboard,” said Steve Erickson, VP and GM of audio and video at Creative. “When it comes to extreme gaming, dedicated Sound Blaster X-Fi 20K2 onboard processing with EAX 5.0 technology blows away the performance of any integrated chipset with host audio on the market.”

“GIGABYTE continues to push the boundaries of performance and functionality with their new Z68-based G1.Sniper 2 gaming motherboard” said Michael Howse, CEO of Bigfoot Networks. “Designed for online gamers and media junkies, it includes our latest Killer™ E2100 Gaming Platform for smarter, faster networking. And with our new Advanced Stream Detect™ technology, GIGABYTE’s new G1.Sniper 2 motherboard provides unparalleled networking performance for online games, streaming media and real-time communications.”

Features on the G1.Sniper2 Z68 LGA1155 motherboard include, but are not limited to, the following:

Support for two card SLI and CrossfireX.
It's not a rare feature, but is is a very important one.  Two top end GPUs can run pretty much anything at truly insane resolutions.

PCIe 3.0 support
Now this is a rare feature.  This is the first motherboard I've seen that supports PCIe 3.0.  For those of you living under a rock, PCIe3.0 is wildly faster than PCIe 2.0, paving the way for a generation of even faster GPUs.  As of yet there are no PCIe 3.0 GPUs out in the wild, but give it a bit and there will be, I expect the next generation of AMD and Nvidia GPUs to be PCIe 3.0.

Onboard Soundblaster X.Fi Sound!
If you're an audiophile, or even just a hardcore gamer, this is a good thing to see.  It supports all the current top end bits, and is built using very high end capacitors, a feature often lacking.

Built in Front Audio Headphone Amplifier
Prefer gaming with headphones?  Gigabyte has you covered there too!  The front audio port features a built in headphone amp sized to drive loads down to 150 ohms for modern high end headphones.

EMI and Power Interference Shielding
That's right, beyond all the other Gigabyte went so far as to armor the audio section of the board against EMI and other magnetic interference, not only from the board but from the general area as well.  There is a literal wall built out of copper surrounding the sound section of the board.  Overkill?  Maybe.  Awesome?  Absolutely!

Bigfoot Networks Killer E2100 Networking
Gaming by yourself is fun, gaming with other people is more fun.  Gaming with other people and having better networking than them is more fun still!  The Bigfoot Networks Killer E2100 network adapter is an interesting setup, on one hand it's an ethernet controller.  On the other hand it has a dedicated "NPU" (Network Processing Unit) that has a solid 1Gb of dedicated DDR2 memory (cache?), this means the networking uses less CPU power and leaves more CPU for the game itself.
Added to the Killer Network Manager software it also puts priority on gaming traffic, further reducing ping times and general latency for your games.
For bonus points, it prioritizes streaming traffic as well to reduce buffering annoyances.

Beyond all that, it also has all the features of Intel's Z68 chipset.  Stuck with a small SSD?  Use it to cache your hard drive with Intel Smart Response Technology!  Gigabyte makes it even easier to set the system up.  The reports I've heard are that it helps a lot, and you can enable it without jumping through a bunch of hoops or reinstalling your operating system.

No word on pricing yet, when I know you'll know!