I don't like the look of the ROG boards because of there being to much red on them. Gigabyte has got the balance of red and black just right on this board though, looks great.
Gigabyte must have someone new in the aesthetics department who told them to ditch the blue PCB. Black PCB with minimalist designed heatsinks everywhere and I'm loving it from them. Hope the performance matches up with the looks.
Great looking board. I personally don't think it is an issue that the on board sound is not amazing. Most people who care about that don't mind having a decent card in there anyway.
These new boards from Gigabyte look great. The feature set is amazing for a mid-priced channel board, and the overall build quality looks top notch. I'm an Asus guy by tradition, but that may be changing with this generation of hardware.