Else he'd have known the costs and consequences ahead of time.

Your job as an engineer is not to redesign what you're paid to implement. It's to implement, correctly, not differently, what you're told to implement. If you have questions, you should ask them. If obvious advantage is apparent to you, you should present it as an option. You should not tell your boss he's using the wrong parts until you know why he's using 'em, which is what you did here, since none of us know why the O/P is using the part he chose. You didn't even know what these parts are, so you have no place criticizing their selection. You clearly have many misconceptions about Intel's line of peripheral chips. Before the next time you waste a bunch of time and bandwidth on criticizing these devices, old and outdated as they may be, I'd suggest you expend a bit of your own time and processing bandwidth on learning what they are.

As I've said before, if the guy wants to restore an old car, telling him the new ones are better won't help him.

RE