Gateway P-6860FX Upgrades

So, I've had my 6860 since the summer of '08, and it's actually held up fairly well for being a massive, gaming laptop from long ago. However, I've had a few problems, most notably the HDMI port breaking. I need to get a new one, and I have no idea where to get replacement motherboard components.

Other than that, though, I'm looking to upgrade my RAM. I know back in '08, everyone was saying that 2GB DDR2 sticks were the most that could be put into the laptop, but since then, manufacturers have made 4GB DDR2 sticks that operate under the same compliance(PC2-5300). Crucial's website says that the manufacturer only supports up to 4GB total, but I didn't know if that was some hardware/BIOS limitation, or if Gateway just didn't "support" anything larger.

So my only question, other than the HDMI port request, is, can I upgrade the RAM to 8GB? I've already used the search function, and have looked through FX topics to see if anyone had upgraded the RAM, and I saw two people recommend upgrading to 8GB, but no posts followed.

Yeah, 4GB was enough for a long time, but I've recently started using more and more memory. I often have several tabs open in Firefox, iTunes playing a playlist, while I'm playing Minecraft. With all of that, I'm almost constantly maxed out -- I've even had Aero quit working a few times.

I'll think about taking the laptop to a shop, but there is only one store close to me that even has computer components, and they charge an arm and a leg for absolutely everything. I'm sure 8GB DDR2 RAM would cost me $200+.

Thanks for the reply though!

Yeah, I realize it's quite a bit for any given moment, but after checking the task manager, I saw that I'm using >90% of my memory at any given moment while running all of my programs. I am getting a T8300 processor for a cheap upgrade($45) as well, so the plan was to upgrade everything and not spend much more than $350.

Yes, I'm on Windows 7. Wouldn't Windows reverting my Aero back to the Basic colors indicate a RAM bottleneck? I don't know, I assumed that's what it was.

Right now, I only have the factory 320GB WD Scorpio Blue hard drive, but I was planning on getting a 1TB 7200rpm HDD. I'd consider an SSD if that would help with this issue.