dv9408ca - Will it support PC2-6400 RAM?

Hi there.. I"m looking at upgrading the memory in my girlfriend's laptop. It's an HP Pavilion dv9408ca with an AMD TK-53 processor. I want to know if it will support PC2-6400 DDR2 RAM? I'm looking at this memory kit which is currently on sale:

OCZ 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz Mobile Series 2 x 1GB Modules Memory Kit SODIMM (OCZ2M8002GK)
http://www.dytronix.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=60_63&products_id=5469&<osCsid>

What do you guys think? Is this a good upgrade from the 1gb PC2-4200 that it comes with? Thanks

 

I doubt that it would support PC2-6400, almost no notebooks support 800MHz RAM. Just put in 2 1GB PC2-5300 sticks, it should make a huge difference to performance (if you are running vista).

 

Maybe, maybe not. I don't think anyone's tested PC2-6400 yet. The BIOS may force it down to PC2-5300. As a rule I recommend Crucial DDR2-667 memory for AMD machines though I see Newegg has a decent price on DDR2-800 (PC2-6400) now.

Worst case, the notebook will try to run DDR2-800 and fail. It's very unlikely but I have to mention it.

 

The laptop is a couple of months old, and was a mid-range laptop anyway. If PC2-6400 is the latest and greatest, then i doubt this laptop supports it. Can I be certain by testing the FSB?

 

The laptop will only support 667Mhz RAM, if you purchase the 800Mhz RAM it will run at the 667Mhz speed. So if you decided to go with the 800Mhz RAM you will be paying more than the 667Mhz and getting the same speed.

 

I checked the FSB for the laptop with CPU-Z and it is listed as 200mhz??? That seems really weird. Then there's the HT link speed which is listed as 800mhz. Whats the deal with that? I thought the RAM could only go as fast as the FSB speed? Could the FSB speed be wrongly reported? Does the HT (HyperTransport) speed have anything to do with the memory? I thought it did. If the HT link speed is 800mhz then does that mean i can use up to 800mhz memory? Sorry for the bombardment of questions, but I have more... Why is it that CPU-Z reports the current memory as PC2-5300 (333MHz)? Another program listed it as PC2-4200 i believe. It seems weird that they would call the 667MHz memory PC2-5400, when PC2-5300 runs almost twice as slow (333MHz supposedly). I'm getting confused here! Whats the deal? Thanks so much for the helpful and informative responses so far. This forum is awesome.

 

AMD CPUs have an integrated memory controller so they can do whatever they want. Intel's old-fashioned external memory controllers are more restricted.

Odds are DDR2-800 would work... if the BIOS doesn't force it to DDR2-667, which it probably will since that's what HP tests and ships with. If you go set your Power Scheme to Always On and go to the memory tab on CPU-Z it'll say that your memory is currently running at about 333MHz, or 667MHz DDR. It'll run slower than that when your computer is idle and power management is properly enabled.