Holering wrote:

440FX also seems to run up to, a celeron 533 (non "a" without sse), so it should be pretty bloody fast. How high can the FSB go anyway? What about the multiplier (how bout' Pentium 2 333 mhz with 5.5 multiplier)? Pics would be great of course.

Many 440FX motherboards support only 2.8V CPUs, so you're limited to Pentium II Klamath with them. FSB is 66 MHz.
Here's a benchmark with 440FX and 440LX boards:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/review-pe … ntel,39-10.html

I have a 440FX system, although it is a dual Pentium Pro (actually it is a Pentium II Overdrive now) 😁

Dual Pentium Pro Computer

That is a very good system mwdmeyer. Seriously, how could you not be impressed back in the day with a 1996 chipset, even comparing single P2 overdrive to k6III+. Pentium II should run DOS games much better than Pentium Pro (improved segment register caches). Who needs agp when you got: Rage 128, Riva TNT, Geforce DDR, and Voodoo 1-5 on PCI. Wonder how zsnes runs on your machine.

I also have a 440FX system I'm going to start to put together (will put up a build log)

ASUS P65UP5 + C-P6ND
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/review-so … oards,48-4.html

This board also supports Dual Socket 7 (430HX) and Dual Slot 1 if you have the correct CPU board.

I have an old Compaq Deskpro 4000 system based on the 440FX.
The Compaq Cardboardpro 4000
It's from early '97, but I'll rattle off the specs anyway.

-PII-300
-192MB EDO (6x32MB). Board will take up to 384, but I just don't feel the need to max this out. I'm completely unimpressed by the chipset's memory performance.
-PCI Radeon 7000 (64MB DDR with a DVI port that surprisingly supports 1920x1200--my 9800Pro certainly doesn't)
-SB AWE64
-20GB/7200 Maxtor PATA HDD--one of the only drives I have that will actually run in DMA mode on this computer.
-LG CD-RW/DVD-ROM
-No onboard USB, so I use a PCI USB card
-No form of power management or soft-off. Has a mechanically controlled PSU with AT leads as well as a strange 10-pin aux connector, which I read was to supply power to the CPU. It's a strange configuration for this type of computer, as many of the P-MMX Deskpro 4000s of the time had ATX PSUs (and even USB).
-Has onboard ethernet, but it appears to be limited to 10mb/s, so I use a PCI 10/100 card.
-The board does support 2.0v operation, but unfortunately it doesn't recognize the L2 cache of Deschutes, Mendocino, and Katmai processors. CPU-Z even classifies these processors as Convington! Therefore, Klamath-300 is the fastest CPU it will properly run.
-Running DOS 6.22 and Windows 2000.

I'm not a big fan of the 440FX chipset. It may have been OK for single-socket PPro systems, but it really seems to be a bottleneck for PII processors. Memory performance is terrible, and the system feels slower than similarly configured LX/BX systems. With the same video card, a PII-350/440BX system scores over twice as high in 3DMark01.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I'm not a big fan of the 440FX chipset. It may have been OK for single-socket PPro systems, but it really seems to be a bottleneck for PII processors. Memory performance is terrible, and the system feels slower than similarly configured LX/BX systems. With the same video card, a PII-350/440BX system scores over twice as high in 3DMark01.

Really? That's very interesting. Came to believe only memory bandwidth would show improvement on LX/BX chips. Perhaps there's other improvements with LX/BX? Why is Intel always so expensive anyway (they weren't so bad during pentium 3 to core2 days)?