Chipset Guide

The TX Chipset was intended to be the first and last Socket-7 chipset to be able to boast high end features such as SDRAM and USB support while allowing the user a variety of power saving options to use. The highly integrated 2 chip packaging solution found in the TX chipset is superior even to that of the 430HX chipset, one of the few areas in which the TX chipset is actually superior to the HX. The SDRAM performance of the TX chipset isn't "bone shattering" due to a timing problem with the chipset (which has been corrected in the Pentium II successor to the TX chipset, the LX chipset), however the stability of SDRAM and the TX chipset at higher bus speeds is much greater than that of EDO and the HX Chipset.

The UltraDMA specification is another plus of the TX chipset, with theoretical transfer rates as high as 33MB/S, nearly equivalent to UltraWide SCSI-3 performance although that number cannot be reproduced significantly in real world applications. Unfortunately the TX chipset still doesn't have the deep CPU and PCI buffers found in the HX chipset, however the performance difference between the TX and the HX chipsets is barely noticeable. The 256MB maximum memory limit of the TX chipset is blurred by its meager 64MB cacheable memory area which takes us back to the old days of the FX chipset. Intel made the TX chipset the proper fare well to the Socket-7 standard in order to make way for the new Slot-1 motherboards, however what they failed to realize was that by not giving the user the option of AGP in a Socket-7 motherboard other companies such as VIA are able to step up and satisfy this need and many more...