Best Ram To Upgrade Two

This alienware notebook is my first foray into gaming/dtr notebooks. So far I am extremely happy with it. However, due to alienware's prices and not knowing what type of ram they were going to put into it, I only ordered the laptop with 2gb of ram knowing I would upgrade it later. As to my knowledge there is only two ram slots is that correct? So at the moment the most ram I could put in it is 4gb, or 2x2gb sticks?

Knowing that, what type of ram would everyone suggest. I see there are a few manufacturers that have DDR3 1333 out, with a CAS of 9. Kingston also just annouced a gamers series of ram, clocked at 1066mz, but has a low latency of 5(current alienware ships theirs with a CAS of 7 which is standard).

Despite the kingtons price, I would go that route if it would offer better performance than the DDR3 1333mz ram. What does everyone think? Also, the m17 does only have 2 slots right? So I cant upgrade to > 4 currently? I ask because killer notebooks has their Nagamaki available with up to 8gbs, not sure how they pulled that off.

 

Don't know the price of the kingston's, I expect it to be expensive.
Also, the low latency of ram barely affects fps during game. Probably by 1 fps.
I will be getting quite a few 2gb ddr3 for cheap $70.

 

Think you can find some 4gb sticks around. Why do you want to upgrade it to 4gb+ ram ? You wont really see a big difference except if you are working on programs like Photoshop in high resolutions.

 

I haven't seen any 2x4gb DDR3 kits, where have you seen them? Right now you can get a 4gb kit for 1066/1333 for 120ish stateside from newegg. The kingston 4gb has a list price of 228. So yes quite a bit more, but I dont have any qualms about spending extra if I will see the difference.

I was told vista scales well with ram, hence why I was wanting > 4gb. I know I was gaming just fine on my XP desktop with 2gb of ram at 1920x1200.

 

Worst case scenario i faced so far is a fully loaded Vista which goes up to 1.3gb usage (and thats why a "few" things running the background) and Crysis which goes up to 1gb. Roughly around 2.3gb of usage and that's with a lot of things that you shouldnt have in the background

There are a few reviews around in Google about 2gb vs 4gb ram in gaming and a few benchmarks. You can always check those too. If you got the extra money and you think 2-3 fps is worth it then 2x2gb ram should be enough. Except if you are into graphic designing or anything similar.

 

Sounds like 4gb is where it's at then. Any input on the speeds? 1066 vs 1333?

 

i don't think the mobo supports more than 1066mhz.