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Purchasing RAM for an m9700

post #1 of 4
8/7/08 at 4:33pm
Thread Starter 
My aurora M9700 has served me well for a year now but I was looking to upgrade the RAM. I currently have 2 sticks of:
  • Capacity: 1024MB
  • Bank Label: DIMM #1
  • Mem_Type: DDR
  • Mem_Frequency: 201.6 MHz
I was wanting to upgrade to 4Gb of RAM and so (as it seemed sensible at the time) I phoned up Alienware and they told me that 4gb of RAM (I forgot to ask for more specific details on the RAM) would cost me £160. I was recently looking up the old factsheets for the m9700 and on all of them it is advertised as supporting 2x1024MB sticks of RAM which made me wonder.
Does the m9700 support 4gb of RAM and am I better off buying though AW or can someone show me a cheaper or better alternative, I would prefer to keep everything on my laptop under warranty.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide and sorry if I sound like a bit of an idiot

P.S. IF anyone knows where I can buy a Geforce GO 7900 GS 512mb it would be greatly appreciated also (AW want £211 for one from them and I want to have a better look around for prices)
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post #2 of 4
8/7/08 at 8:53pm
If Alienware released a new bios for the m9700 that will allow the motherboard to recognize 4G, 2 x 2G sticks, you can upgrade. I'm using the 3.17 bios, not sure that supports 4G memory, the 3.18 is there (no mention of memor capacity in the manual...), but it's got updates for Vista, and I've got XP on my m9700.

You should be able to buy any so-dimm DDR400 (pc3200) 200 pin memory, just make sure it's the notebook memory. Not sure where to get it in the UK. I just checked Newegg.com, and they don't have any 2G sticks of DDR memory, only DDR2 and that won't work in the m9700. If AW has them, it may be the only place to get them. Are you sure they didn't think you had an m9750?

You'll see much more performance improvement from the SLI addition. 2G is still plenty of memory for an XP system.

As for the vid card, I'm not aware of anywhere but AW that sells this type of card that will work in the m9700. If I remember right, when you ordered new, the second card in SLI was a $400 option, but if you bought it as an upgrade and installed it yourself it was $230 or so. Seems the pricing isn't too bad.
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post #3 of 4
8/10/08 at 3:56pm
Thread Starter 
well I phoned em up to see what was available and while they can supply 4Gb of Ram it is only 200Mhz which isnt fantastic and I cant find 4Gb of DDR400 anywhere (don't think anyone made it tbh).

I am now looking at getting a 2nd 7900GS either a 512mb or a 256mb, while the 512 one would obviuosly give a better performance increase would there be any forseeable problems with haveing a 512 and a 256 installed or should I get the 512 one (what I get depends on prices)
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post #4 of 4
8/10/08 at 8:50pm
I thought the m9700 only worked with DDR400 which runs at 200Mhz, but due to the double data rate, it's considered 400Mhz... If you're running XP, 2G should be plenty of memory.

As for SLI'ing a 256 and 512 card together, I haven't heard of anyone that's tried that. The difference between the cards with the onboard memory mainly will affect details at high resolutions wtih settings on high with AA and AF.

I got the 512 cards in my m9700 due to getting the 1920 x 1200 screen. I likely would have gone with the 256 cards if I got the 1440 x 900 screen.

I have read of people having problems when trying to match differing cards in SLI on desktops, not sure if that applies to the only difference being onboard memory. I think were I in your position, I'd look for another 256 card just to be safe. The SLI 256 and 512 cards are the same as I understand it except for the extra onboard memory and things like the bios.

You may want to ask Alienware if the combination will cause any known issues.
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