The driver for the 440BX's separate i82443bxgx EDAC chip is being removed as it hasn't actually worked for 19 years. This is the driver for things like ECC memory fault detection and correction.

The 440BX chipset itself is still supported and works fine. Removing support for that hardware would break billions of active virtual systems and I doubt the Linux kernel would allow such a disruptive change.

Yet another instance of a mainstream tech journalist not understanding what they're reporting. I expect better from a site like Tom's Hardware. Very disappointing.