In the world of technology, a year can seem like a lifetime, and in fact it is for most things. In the days of the Intel Pentium processor, Socket 7 chipsets left the front page faster than they appeared on it. The 430VX, 430HX, and 430TX all had lives shorter than most insects. Even the first two chipsets for the Pentium II processor, the 440FX and the 440LX, didn’t last very long. But their bigger brother, the 440BX, lived on for a long time and still may be found in many systems being used today.

How did the 440BX, or, for the sake of sanity, the BX, live so long? It didn’t eat a lot of fiber, nor drink an ounce of red wine per day, and it didn’t even exercise for 1:30 hours a week. It simply was made to withstand the test of time. A chipset’s lifespan is based upon what it supports, and what supports it. The 440FX for example was a great chipset for it’s time, but it didn’t support AGP very well, nor did it support many other features; it was simply a Pentium Pro Chipset. The 440LX wasn’t all that great either, basically because of the lack of official 100MHz bus support. Enter the 440BX.

• 100Mhz of raw FSB Power (for the time, that rocked)
  
• AGP2X/1X Support
  
• UDMA/33 Hard Drive support built in

For a very long time, this was all the average Joe could ever ask for. SDRAM couldn’t go much faster than 100MHz for that time, so no one needed anything more. AGP 4X isn’t really an improvement over AGP2x, due to onboard memory limitations and other bandwidth concerns. And not long ago, UDMA/33 support was all a hard drive ever really needed. But, as always, Intel decided to retire it’s 440BX chipset, and it had a master plan to do it.

Their first plan called for the use of newer processors that used the 133MHz bus. Because memory was getting faster and faster, it was now being able to hit 133MHz very easily, and because that would mean a faster computer, it would make the chip that used the 133MHz bus very fast. Secondly, they planed to totally forget using SDRAM, and start using an expensive alternative called Direct RamBus Ram. The theory behind RamBus is that it can send a huge amount of data to the processor, but it takes a very long time to do it, as opposed to SDRAM, which is very quick, but can only send 8KB per clock tick.

The plan horribly backfired. It was obvious that people didn’t want to buy expensive memory when it would only get them minimal performance. Secondly, a special converting chip was needed so that the new chipset for the new Pentium III’s, called i820, could talk to SDRAM. Of course, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. The MTH as the chip was called was found to be full of errors, and therefore production stopped, and all were recalled. As far as chipsets from Intel, the BX was still on top of the heap.

Enough with how Intel’s plans failed, let’s talk about how Intel’s plans worked. When planning the 440BX, something went horribly right. On most chipsets, if you overclock the system bus, often called frontside bus, you’ll also overclock the AGP and PCI devices. Thankfully, the major portion of the worry, the PCI overclock, turned out to not be a problem when the BX chipset was clocked at 133MHz. Because of the usual 1:3 ratio for BX:PCI speed, most thought a 133MHz front side bus speed would lead to a 44.3MHz PCI speed, which is totally out of spec for anything to plug into a PCI slot. Luckly, someone found this not to be true. The wonderful BX chipset will automatically use a 4:1 ratio when dealing with a 133MHz front side bus or greater, leaving you with 33Mhz for your PCI frequency.

On the other hand, the AGP will still be overclocked to breakneck speeds, or about 89MHz. Believe it or not, that is not really a problem at all. Most AGP cards, especially those made by nVidia, can do those speeds easily.

So, with the 440BX chipset, a 133MHz FSB Pentium III, some PC133 SDRAM, and a good video card, you can get the same performance with i820 and DDR-DRAM for a fraction of the price. Sounds too good to be true don’t it? This time, it is true!

If you remember correctly, Intel isn’t the only company in the market of making chipsets. VIA is also a not so successful company that makes mostly chipsets, but also other silicon trinkets, including the Cyrix III processor. Near the time of the launch of the Pentium III 133MHz bus chip, VIA announced it’s own chipset for it. It ran at 133MHz officially, had onboard UDMA/66 capabilities, and even used SDRAM. It was all anyone wanted. There was one slight problem…the performance of this chipset, called the 133A, was horrible compared to the BX @ 133. Therefore, the BX remained the chipset of desire for most people.

BX was a real workhorse chipset and quite powerful for the time. It has now been surpassed as users go for chipsets for their Athlon XP’s and Pentium IV’s, but BX is always a chipset worthy of mention.