Max RAM Upgrade on DV9260NR

I understand HP states 2GB max for the model on their site, but I have heard not on this site) that some have upgraded their DV9260nr's to 4GB, as I wish to do. The unit's chipset is an Intel i945 which supports up to 4GB, my question: is the 2GB max true or can the unit be upgraded to 4GB?

I wish I had the fore site to realize that purchasing a unit with Vista Ultimate 64 and not having the capability to go beyond 2GB is really a waste outside of the proclaimed security enhancements that Vista 64 offers.


Thanks in advance.

 

Pavilions support 4 GB.

 

I wish the HP tech support had a clue. I will go ahead with my plans on purchasing 4GB.

Thanks

 

Pickled,

As Lithus states you can put 4GB of RAM into your machine. I've heard many times that HP stated that it can only support upto 2GB even though they were wrong and it could support upto 4GB. You have nothing to worry about, except enjoying the 4GB of RAM once its in your laptop.

 

Just got around to upgrading my unit with 4GB (G.SKILL 2x2048) and VISTA 64 is reporting only 3GB available, Help.

Is this a case of the apparent lack of the "memory remapping" functionality on the BIOS (ver F.27) for I believe the Geforce 7600 is mapping the added shared memory in the 4GB address space. Any suggestions.

Note: BIOS reports 4GB available.

Thanks

 

If you don't have a 64 bit OS, it'll only see 3ish. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=172649

 

Are you really running 64 Bits Vista?

3GB limitation is a issue of 32 Bits Only.

 

Yes, I'm running Vista Ultimate 64.

 

A quick question regarding ram. What exact type does pavilion take? DDR2 - 5300 667mhz is this correct?

Im currently looking at expanding to 3gb under vista32. Whats a fair or cheap price for a 2gb stick? So i know im not paying too much. Atm im looking at a kingston 2gb ddr2 5300 for about $134US

 

flipfire: You're right in regards to the memory specs and a fair price would be between $60-$75 for 2GB. I paid $170 for 4GB. Check out Newegg.com

Anybody have any thoughts as to where the missing 1GB is my configuration, again running Vista64 with 4GB which is reported by the BIOS.

 

Well I think I may have an answer to my question:

The Geforce Go 7600 is eating up my memory with Vista's memory grubbing turbo cache feature. The card is using 1.2GB of memory as shared system memory, this on top of the 256MB dedicated, Arg! and of course with the Intel based unit the Bios feature (aperture size, I think) to disable it is not available (+1 for AMD users).

The audacity to allocate 1.2GB of essentially UMA memory and not having the capability to specify the allocation is ludicrous IMHO, I know that in theory the memory would/should be released back to the OS if needed, but...

 

Update: Looks like maybe the hardware on the DV9260nr is also not up to par in support of M$ requirements, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us

The DV9260nr uses the Intel i945PM chipset which is not in the list of Req's in the above article. Looks like 3GB is all that I will get.

 

Also, Pavilion laptops only support RAM upto 667Mhz (PC 5300 and 5400) speed. So don't waste your money buying the 800Mhz RAM. Even if you did purchase the 800Mhz RAM, it will still work in your laptop, but will only run at 667Mhz.

 

Wow. RAM and computers in America is ALOT cheaper than here in Aust. You guys are so lucky. Newegg doesnt ship to international countries :/ Anyone know any other American online shops that ship overseas?

Does more ram drain more power on the battery? While looking around I noticed most run on 1.8v and some run on 2+v

 

You'll never notice the difference.

 

Hello Pickled,
Did you see any performance increase from the additional 1 gig of ram your system sees? I too have the same computer and have been very happy with it except for the ram limitations. You said that the processor is what is limiting the ram. Is it possible to swap out the processor with one that supports more ram? Or would you run into a confliction with the mother board? Lastly If you did upgrade the processor, I would imagine bios would need to be reflashed with a diffrent vs.? Would there be any other steps to upgrade the processor?

 

MichiganTim,

The processor is not the limiting factor for the memory usage, and in fact the unit does recognize the 4GB of which I have 3GB available for Vista64 which is better than 2GB, but none-the-less the 1GB I was complaining about is being used as shared memory for the Video subsystem, not ideal at all.

The reference I made in regards to the chipset is that it looks like we (i945/HP 9260nr) users are SOL in regards to having the capability for the BIOS to either have the aperture size or memory remapping functionality (if possible) to provide the full 4GB for the OS.

All-in-all though I would wait for the either a driver update from Nvidia (they might be able to correct this) or if your computing environment really dictates that you need as much memory as possible e.g. video processing, simulation...etc then by all means pick up the additional 2GB and be aware that the OS will only identify 3GB initially. As per the performance aspect, I really haven't noticed a markable increase since boosting memory, in fact the useless WEI (Windows Experience Index) didn't budge at all..

 

I've also tried to upgrade to 4GB of ram in my DV2000t with a 7200 GO. The 7600 GO uses more memory than my 7200 GO. But the BIOS still reports only 3072 MBytes.

Why is that?