Everyone praises the ABITs, the AOpens of the industry when it comes to the tweaker looking to overclock; and then the Tyans and Supermicros of the industry walk away with the fame when discussing high-end workstation/server motherboards, but one of the most commonly overlooked motherboard manufacturers by most hardware enthusiasts happens to be those made in the plants of Intel. Ironically enough, Intel happens to be the most popular motherboard manufacturer when it comes down to sales, Intel averages over twice in amount of sales as the next leading motherboard manufacturer, meaning of course, that Intel is number one in that field as well.

AnandTech took a look at Intel's only BX based motherboard a while back, the SE440BX, however in a world dominated by overclocking, the motherboard did not emerge with a favorable review. The only strength of the SE440BX seemed to be its design and construction, which lead it to be one of the most reliable motherboards AnandTech has ever tortured in the labs. How many gamers do you think bought the SE440BX for their systems? Most likely very few. Last year was the year of the overclocked Celeron, and the only motherboard available that provides absolutely no potential for overclocking happened to be the SE440BX.

With the overclockable Celeron 300A slowly disappearing from the gaming scene and the introduction of faster parts (both Pentium III and Celeron), the choice for a motherboard is now much greater than the once simple path of the ABIT BH6. At the same time, the trend towards highly integrated motherboard solutions is building, with Intel behind the wheel of this bandwagon now. Intel's latest release illustrates this trend, however how well suited is the SR440BX for your needs?

New Anand Tech Report Card Rating
90/A-

The Good

On the topic of memory, the SR440BX is outfitted with a meager 2 SDRAM DIMM slots, however for a motherboard of this size, that can be expected. The ATX power supply connector is carefully placed alongside of the second DIMM slot and is out of the way of any components on the motherboard. The DIMM slots are placed almost flush with the 443BX North Bridge controller chip, therefore decreasing the trace length between the chipset and the DIMM slots, and therefore decreasing the possibility of reliability problems caused by memory issues. Unfortunately, the rest of the fate of your system falls into the hands of the memory manufacturers and how well they design their modules.

Continuing along the path of integration, the SR440BX boasts one of the highest quality integrated sound controllers featured on a motherboard, the Creative Labs PCI SoundBlaster 64 (ES1373). The on-board PCI audio controller is increasingly common among highly integrated motherboards, with more and more manufacturers even taking advantage of the ES1373 controller chip. Needless to say, the sound quality on the SR440BX is great enough for anyone not interested in a fully 3D audio experience. For those of you that are, the on-board sound can be disabled within the BIOS setup.

Intel provides the standard User's Manual and driver's CD-ROM with the SR440BX. The manual covers everything you need to know about the motherboard, in a multitude of languages as well. The included CD-ROM provides you with all of the drivers you'll need for the SR440BX, as well as a copy of the user documentation for the motherboard. The SR440BX is a completely jumperless motherboard, the only configuration option on the motherboard itself is whether or not you want to allow access to the BIOS, a feature which must be disabled if you want your system to boot properly (the SR440BX is basically a configure once type of motherboard, no tweaking here).

Stability seems to the the top priority of Intel with their motherboards, they aren't overly concerned with the performance or the features of their boards since they already have a guaranteed following from the larger OEMs (Dell, Gateway, etc...), but if their boards should start to fail, they will have to take the beating quite a few users would give them. Most motherboards you see in those Gateway, Dell and Micron PCs are manufactured by Intel, and as you can probably guess, that ends up being more motherboards than even ABIT/AOpen can account for selling...combined. So it makes sense for Intel to want to concentrate on the stability/quality of their products, rather than how high you can overclock them. The result? The SR440BX is a motherboard truly deserving of a commendation on the part of its rock solid stability, even putting the AOpen AX6BC to shame in terms of overall quality, reliability and stability.

The performance of the SR440BX, due to its integrated TNT accelerator, happens to be greater than that of most competing motherboards under Winstone 99. At the same time, the OpenGL support the integrated TNT brings to the table and incredible performance, make the SR440BX an almost ideal choice for users looking for a highly integrated system.

The Bad

With the amount of praise that the SR440BX just received, it should be prepared to receive a bit of a thrashing.  First of all, the SR440BX is entirely un-overclockable, so don't even plan on taking any processor above its rated frequency on this motherboard, end of discussion.

Although the integrated TNT is a speedy solution now, what happens 6 months down the line when the TNT2 is mainstream and nVidia's upcoming product (NV10) is finally hitting the minds of the die hard gamers?  The SR440BX leaves you with 4 PCI slots to install a PCI graphics adapter, but no replacement AGP slot.  The long term outlook of the SR440BX is not too pleasant. 

The lack of a heatsink on the 443BX North Bridge controller is a tad disappointing, however it seems like there had to be some way to offset the cost of the SR440BX. 

The SR440BX is very picky about what type of SDRAM you stick in it, while AnandTech's Corsair/SEC modules failed to boot, the SEC originals from Memman/Mushkin worked perfectly fine.  Needless to say, you're better off if you check up on the memory compatibility of the motherboard before pursuing a purchase.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB Mushkin PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 256MB Corsair PC100 SDRAM DIMM (for compatibility testing only)

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.mushkin.com

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

AnandTech Motherboard Testing Methodology

The Final Decision

As far as an integrated motherboard goes, the SR440BX is the best money can buy if stability is your primary concern.  You won't want to come within 10 feet of this motherboard if you plan on overclocking, or if you plan on getting the absolute best in gaming performance.  However, if you're looking for a rock solid motherboard, with above average integrated audio/video and don't mind spending a pretty penny, the SR440BX may just be for you.  Intel knows how to make a quality motherboard, but they can't seem to make a "feature-filled" one.

How it Rates

Click Here to learn about AnandTech's Motherboard Testing Methodology.