Anyone here own/tweak the 440LX chipset? I have never owned one myself and have only used one once. I found that Abit made a LX board....
I had a Pentium II with a 440FX chipset and then upgraded to a BX board.
I have a dual CPU machine with one, it's a proprietary workstation system though, so it's pretty limited in the way of tweaking. Anything in particular you want to know?
The BX is is an evolution of the LX so they are quite similar. The LX was designed for the Pentium II Klamath so it maxes out at 66 MHz FSB. And you could probably find some motherboards based on the LX with SIMMs. When it comes to performance, I don't know of anything the BX couldn't do better or at least at the same level.
Yeah what's strange is I bought a 440FX board when the LX was out. I've been thinking about that lately. I don't remember if 440LX boards had a bad rep at the time or if I was just after a good FX mobo (got a Megatrends FX83A).
In retrospect, LX wasn't really much of a tangible improvement over FX cuz AGP was nigh worthless in '97/98 and UDMA33 kinda was too.... And while it supported SDRAM, I bet it was picky about what SDRAM you could use as most early SDRAM boards were (2/4clk stuff). And it was still limited to 66 MHz.
And while it supported SDRAM, I bet it was picky about what SDRAM you could use as most early SDRAM boards were
Mine isn't, really... I populated it to the ful 512MB with random sticks dug out of my RAM drawer, and have seen no problems.
In my experience with the LX system I have now, and one board I had before (a Legend QDI somethingorother), there's absolutely no difference between the LX and a BX running at 66mhz.
I don't remember if 440LX boards had a bad rep at the time or if I was just after a good FX mobo
Or maybe the FX was cheaper, or you already had RAM you wanted to reuse? I don't remember the LX having a bad rep... I think it was more of a case that the early adopters got FX boards and didn't see enough of a reason to upgrade to the LX, the later adopters held off until the BX, and then people in the middle bought based on what features they needed (which didn't generally include AGP or SDRAM at the time), or what was tested and proven (which again didn't really include AGP or SDRAM yet), or budgetary concerns (which, once again...). It was really only the people who wanted to be on the bleeding edge that picked up LX boards.
