A Pentium II board in comparison costs about 290 DM more. The chipset is responsible for much of the price difference. Currently Intel's least expensive PII chip , the 440LX, is still notably more expensive than the chips of the Socket-7 competition. In order to participate in the low-cost markets, Intel has now launched the 440EX chipset. It is pin-compatible with the 440LX, but only has a limited function range.
Further cutbacks are more far-reaching for the user.
Intel also cut the circuits for the main memory. 440EX boards therefore have only two DIMM slots. According to current Intel doctrine, a 440EX board can be adorned at the most with a Pentium-II 333. Anything faster is prohibited. This may well save costs, but it also limits the slots available for cards to three.