The new Intel 440FX PCIset brings the performance of the Pentium® Pro Processor, and the flexibility and capability of the Universal Serial Bus (USB), to the new business desktop PC.

• High Performance/Low Price Point PCs

• The Price/Performance Advantage

• The Time-to-Market Advantage

• The LANDesk® Advantage

High performance/low price point PCs
The Intel 440FX PCIset enables PC makers to deliver a new class of mainstream business desktop systems with enhanced 32-bit performance and the advantages of USB peripheral connectivity––all at a sub-$3,000 price point. The new business computer systems based on the Pentium® Pro-200MHz processor offer 75% better performance than the fastest available Pentium-166MHz processor-based PC (based on SYSmark/NT* performance data).

The Intel 440FX PCIset employs improved chip set integration to deliver higher performance with just half the number of components as the previous Intel PCIset design. the Intel 440FX PCIset offers optimized performance for Pentium Pro processor based systems, with a number of important advantages for system designers:

• Optimal 32-bit performance results from a number of Intel 440FX PCIset enhancements, including CPU-to-DRAM pipelining, read-around write, dynamic deferring, write burst combining and I/O queue. Business PCs with the Intel 440FX PCIset are today's best choice for Windows* NT, while also enabling industry management standards such as the Desktop Management Interface (DMI) that can reduce the overall cost of system ownership.

• Concurrent PCI enables faster and smoother multimedia operation and better scalability. More efficient operation of CPU, PCI and ISA transactions supports improved video performance. Audio performance is enhanced because CPU and PCI masters have interleaved access to the bus during ISA, DMA and bus master cycles. Finally, deeper write buffers enable superior performance for both CPU and PCI 2.1 and 2.0 compatible add-in cards for built-in scalability and flexible system expansion.

• Universal Serial Bus (USB) compliance enables"plug and play" peripheral connectivity. The 12Mb/second bus enables the PC to be simultaneously connected to as many as 127 peripherals, including computer telephony devices, joysticks, monitors, mice, digital cameras and keyboards––without specialized software configurations, add-in cards or user switch settings. Hot insertion, removal and auto-configuration allows users to quickly and easily add and remove peripherals while their PC stays up and running.

• Bus Master IDE allows faster access to hard drives and CD-ROMs, while making fewer demands on the CPU. Users will notice an immediate improvement in multimedia performance.

• Integrated Error Checking and Correction (ECC) in the memory controller provides double-bit detection and single-bit correction. The result is improved system reliability for critical business applications.

The price/performance advantage
Higher integration makes the Intel 440FX PCIset even more cost-effective than previous Intel PCIset designs. The Intel 440FX PCIset design features a 3-chip implementation including a PCI and memory controller, data bus accelerator and PCI/ISA/IDE accelerator. The chip set also supports Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) enabling dual-processor system configurations.

The time-to-market advantage
To optimize investments in design development and speed time-to-market, the Intel 440FX PCIset employs the same PIIX3-based I/O subsystem as the earlier Intel 430HX and 430VX PCIsets. Reference designs, IBIS models and schematic files are all available now.

The Intel 440FX PCIset has been integrated into three standard Intel motherboards for PC manufacturers:

• The VS440FX ATX form factor single-processor board.

• The AP440FX LPX form factor single-processor board.

• The PR440FX custom ATX form factor board with dual processors.

LANDesk: lowering the cost of business PC ownership
Business PCs based on the Pentium Pro processor enable information technology managers to reduce the cost of system ownership by supporting DMI, an open architecture standard for managing desktop PCs, servers, hardware, and software products and peripherals.

Intel LANDesk Client Manager is a DMI-enabled product that streamlines both local and network-based management of desktop client systems. LANDesk-equipped PCs allow users to monitor memory usage, and provides self-diagnostics which alert users to potential problems before they happen. The overall result is a lower rate of help calls, and reduced cost of ownership.