Long On The Tooth and Short On Substance.
Written: Mar 11 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quality, stability (compared with even Intel's more recent motherboards)
Cons: Nontweakable, short on expansion, mediocre performance
The Bottom Line: The Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard was a decent board when it was first introduced, but several annoying quirks and an aging chipset conspire to render it outdated.
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| LetItRut's Full Review: Intel SE440BX-2 |
I used to own an Intel SE440BX-2 with integrated audio, and I thought I was going to be happy with it - until it has some serious shortcomings. I sold it and first upgraded to an Intel VC820 motherboard with 128MB of PC800 RDRAM (which I too thought I liked, but no longer do after I heard horror stories about the 820 chipset) - and now to my current Asus P3B-F motherboard (same chipset as the SE440BX-2, but far more tweakable and nearly as stable).
When I installed the SE440BX-2, the motherboard proved to be very picky about the installed memory. This motherboard can recognize only PC100 memory; attempting to use my 256MB stick of Crucial PC133 CL2 SDRAM will result in the warning message "SPD (Serial Presence Detect) missing or unknown. Assuming 100MHz memory speed." And when that message shows up, the board will then use the slower CL3 timings, with absolutely no way of re-adjusting them! I had expected CL2 memory timings with CL2-rated SDRAM at rated memory clock speed or slower! My current Asus P3B-F properly recognizes the same PC133 SDRAM module as having CL2 timings.
And when I upgraded the processor from a 300MHz Pentium II to a 700MHz "Coppermine" Pentium III, I moved the SE440BX-2's single jumper to the "config" position, and booted the system until the BIOS Setup Utility screen appears. And once that screen appears, there's absolutely no way to set the processor speed with a "multiplier-locked" processor in place! What to do? Simply save the settings and exit BIOS Setup, shut down the computer, move the jumper back to "normal" position, and turn on the computer. That's it! The auto-detected processor speed is now locked.
After installing Windows 98 Second Edition on the computer, I ran the usual Winstone and WinBench tests. Surprisingly, Business Winstone 2001 and Content Creation 2001 came out slightly lower with the SE440BX-2 motherboard than with either the VC820 or the Asus P3B-F motherboards. Even more astounding is that the 3D WinMark 2000, Business Graphics WinMark 99 and Business Disk WinMark 99 scores also came out slightly lower than either the VC820 or the P3B-F motherboards. I place much of the blame for the mediocre performance of the SE440BX-2 on its BIOS and on the relatively long connection traces between the components on the motherboard.
Expansion is another weak point of the SE440BX-2. Although the motherboard has two ISA slots (but who buys new ISA peripherals nowadays?), it has only four PCI slots - too few in this day and age of motherboards offering six PCI slots. The VC820's five PCI slots is considered average for a regular-size motherboard, but my current Asus P3B-F has six PCI slots. One bright spot, however: The three DIMM slots on the SE440BX-2 allow up to 768MB of PC100 SDRAM; though short of the 1GB maximum memory capacity of my Asus motherboard, that's still 256MB more than the 512MB maximum memory limit of newer Intel chipsets that don't support dual-channel RDRAM memory.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 119.00
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Epinions.com ID:
LetItRut
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 - Top 1000 |
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Location: Melrose Park, IL, USA
Reviews written: 53
Trusted by: 27 members
About Me:
An audio enthusiast and a computer geek who loves bike riding.
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