The summer of 1997 saw Intel launch its highly sucessful Pentium II processor. At first it was only supported by the i440FX chipset which was designed for the Pentium Pro and were modified to accept the then new Slot 1 CPU connector. The FX though was only an interim whilst Intel prepared its proper Pentium II chipset, the i440LX.

The LX (as we shall call it from now on) was launched in September of 1997 and brought with it a number of features which had not previously been seen on PC motherboards. The LX was Intel's new high end chipset and remained so until the launch of its sucessor, the i440BX (known as the BX chipset) in April of 1998.

Intel i440LX, what does it do?

The LX was a very advanced chipset at the time of its launch in 1997. It brought with it many features such as the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), dual processor support, PCI 2.1, USB and support for ECC, parity, EDO and SDRAM. The LX could support up to 512 Mb of memory in up to 4 DIMM sockets, although many boards were only fitted with 3 DIMM sockets.

The LX supported Pentium II and later Celeron processors on a 66 MHz Front Side Bus, which was the standard for all chips which could be fitted to an LX board. Some later LX motherboards had support for 75 and even 83 MHz bus speeds, but these were not officially supported by Intel, although they were welcomed by the overclocking community. For the majority of LX motherboard, 66 MHz was all that was required.

The biggest feature that the LX brought with its introduction was the inclusion of an AGP slot. The Accelerated Graphics Port was designed to relieve the momeory bottlneck found with PCI graphics cards as it brought with it a higher bandwidth and a 66 MHz operating speed, compared to the 33 MHz found with PCI.

The majority of LX motherboards manufactured were in the ATX form factor and featured a Slot 1 connector for the Pentium II and later Celeron processors. A small number were made in the AT form factor although these featured a number of compromises and later there were some boards made in the micro ATX form factor. After the introduction of the BX chipset in 1998, the LX found itself being pushed down the Intel chipset hierarchy. This meant that it was a chipset which was more likely to be found on budget systems and in 1999 there were a number of boards based around the LX chipset which featured the new Socket 370 ZIF socket designed for Celeron processors.

Production of the LX chipset has now ceased.

LX in use.