Hello all. I know this is an old thread, but it has practically all the info I need. The OP has the exact same Rig that I do, with only a few differences. I'll copy/paste what he has. Differences in RED

Motherboard
Manufacturer alienware
Model alienware
Version alienware
Chipset Vendor NVIDIA
Chipset Model nForce 680i SLI SPP
Chipset Revision A2
Southbridge Vendor NVIDIA
Southbridge Model nForce 680i SLI MCP
Southbridge Revision A2 MINE IS A3
BIOS
Brand Phoenix Technologies, LTD
Version 6.00 PG
Date 07/03/2007 MINE IS 01/22/2008

What im trying to do is get more RAM. I currently have 4 x1GB sticks. My research has told me this Motherboard has a MAX 4GB support.

When I switch to Win7 x64 OS will this open up my Motherboard to except more RAM or am I stuck with 4GB and will need to replace MB?

I'm learning this all on the fly. Hope this makes sense and Thanx in advance.

Hello TrickIce, and welcome to Vista Forums.

In this case, you are limited by how much RAM your motherboard supports. If it only supports 4GB, then you'll have to replace the motherboard with one that supports more than 4GB.

Could you most back with what model number your computer is? I'll be happy to try and look up the specs on it.

Originally Posted by TrickIce

What im trying to do is get more RAM. I currently have 4 x1GB sticks. My research has told me this Motherboard has a MAX 4GB support.

There's your answer right there. If you found specifications for the motherboard and see that no more than 4Gb is supported, then that is your limit. The CMOS is physically installed on the board and will be set with that limit, whereby any attempt to exceed the maximum memory will prevent the excess memory chips from functioning.

That's great news if true, but you'll have to replace your current 4x1GB DDR2 RAM with 4x2GB sticks to have 8GB of DDR2 RAM though.

Glad to hear that you got it figured out in your favor, and that you'll be able to have 8Gb RAM installed. However, if you do have some time to try a little test, I'd be very interested to hear what your impressions are of the system functioning first with 4Gb and then with 8Gb. I've been told that once crossing the 4Gb threshold that additional RAM doesn't improve things a great deal, unless you're doing intense multi-processing activities like compiling code. The biggest bang for the buck improvement is with SSD's (solid state drives) over SATA.