Nope that's a Mobile only chipset that said you have a solid laptop there I always liked the PIII Mobile CPUs.

There were motherboards built around other mobile-only chipsets (I have an AOpen Pentium M uATX board with i855GME chipset, for example), so it's not a crazy suggestion. Not aware of any i830-based desktop(ish) boards though, and none on TheRetroWeb either.

That's because 830MP preceded the "mobile-chipset-on-desktop-board" trend by quite a few years. No one thought of it until Pentium M came to exist.

Depends on what you consider ultimate. From workstation perspective probably something from Serverworks that has AGP Pro, 4 Gb RAM support and SMP could be ultimate. From overclocking perspective you can't really beat Intel i815.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-02-25, 14:33:

That's because 830MP preceded the "mobile-chipset-on-desktop-board" trend by quite a few years. No one thought of it until Pentium M came to exist.

The Via MVP3 and 4 mobile chipsets that were commonly used on desktop boards two or three years prior to Almador, in later years paired with K6-2+/3+ mobile CPUs sort of undermine that statement - and I recall a Chips&Technology mobile chipset for 386DX that contained L2 cache that found its way onto quite a few motherboards a good number of years before that.

I'd suggest it was rather that the Pentium 3-M was a short-lived platform and Intel was doing its best to bury the i830 before it was ever released, in particular on desktop systems, as part of their general push to Netburst.

Intel set off the trend with "mobile-chipset-on-desktop-board" starting with Pentium M. Not specifically in their own factory (I've yet to see a 855-based IDB, only 3rd parties like DFI and AOpen)

MVP3/4 and the others weren't seen as "official" stuff in Intel's eyes - same goes for a lot of VIA's chipsets actually.

What Intel thought of it is hardly relevant for non-Intel motherboard manufacturers. There were also motherboards based on earlier Intel mobile chipsets such as the i440MX (Acrosser AR-B1661 and Lanner Electronics EM-564B for example), and the i830M was contemporary with the first Epia boards.

just seems odd to me that intel seemed to really bury this chipset after the P4-M took off. very minimal documentation online, few mentions of either the i830 MCH or the ICH3 despite it also having a server model? did these components ever exist or just in theory?

though the ICH3 was clearly a stopgap so its lack of documentation makes sense i guess. the i830 seems like the real deal performance wise, just no way to install a half decent GPU in a mobile platform. apparently a Geforce2 Go module exists for the C610, but appears to be unobtanium. what is also odd to me is Dell's decision to use the i815 in the inspiron 8100, which is from the same generation as the C610 and uses the same tualatin CPUs.

fiasn wrote on 2025-10-30, 00:16:

though the ICH3 was clearly a stopgap so its lack of documentation makes sense i guess. the i830 seems like the real deal performance wise, just no way to install a half decent GPU in a mobile platform. apparently a Geforce2 Go module exists for the C610, but appears to be unobtanium. what is also odd to me is Dell's decision to use the i815 in the inspiron 8100, which is from the same generation as the C610 and uses the same tualatin CPUs.

I have this chipset paired with GeForce 4 440Go (from C840), it has the same module design as GeForce 2 Go, which was installed originally on Dell Latitude C810.