Upgrading and Repairing PCs (17th Edition)

Intel's Early 386/486 Chipsets

Intel's first real PC motherboard chipset was the 82350 chipset for the 386DX and 486 processors. This chipset was not very successful, mainly because the EISA bus was not very popular and many other manufacturers were making standard 386 and 486 motherboard chipsets at the time. The market changed very quickly, and Intel dropped the EISA bus support and introduced follow-up 486 chipsets that were much more successful.

Table 4.13 shows the Intel 486 chipsets.

Table 4.13. Intel 486 Motherboard Chipsets

Chipset

420TX

420EX

420ZX

Code name

Saturn

Aries

Saturn II

Date introduced

Nov. 1992

March 1994

March 1994

Processor

5V 486

5V/3.3V 486

5V/3.3V 486

Bus speed

Up to 33MHz

Up to 50MHz

Up to 33MHz

SMP (dual CPUs)

No

No

No

Memory types

FPM

FPM

FPM

Parity/ECC

Parity

Parity

Parity

Max. memory

128MB

128MB

160MB

L2 cache type

Async

Async

Async

PCI support

2.0

2.0

2.1

AGP support

No

No

No

AGP = Accelerated graphics port

FPM = Fast page mode

PCI = Peripheral component interconnect

SMP = Symmetric multiprocessing (dual processors)

Note: PCI 2.1 supports concurrent PCI operations.

The 420 series chipsets were the first to introduce the North/South Bridge design that is still used in many chipsets today.

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