The FSB is 800 yes,but,the MOBO can only run at 667.So while you can add/run 800 RAM on this system it is only going to run at 667.

The 667 Mhz limit is built in. No BIOS mod will change it. Going to 800 Mhz WILL NOT make much difference in performance. If you have speed problems, it is either the program is demending or something else in the system slowing down. What video do you have? What game is not playing well? In many cases, you will need to set the features of a game to the middle graund. The M1530 IS NOT agaming machine. For good gaming, you need an M1730 with dual video.

Dell did not cap anything at 667,the MOBO will only run at 667 even though the FSB is 800,the MOBO,as posted above will only run at 667.You will need to get a system with the new Montevina chipset that does run at 800.

Dell did not cap anything at 667,the MOBO will only run at 667 even though the FSB is 800,the MOBO,as posted above will only run at 667.You will need to get a system with the new Montevina chipset that does run at 800.

Thats not true because even if you look at the recent XPS's build. They market them with a FSB of up to 800mhz but sell 667 Ram. Even the latitude series market with 800 FSB.

Dell did not "cap" anything  -- the chipset in the M1530 is incapable of running RAM at 800 MHz.  It is a built-in design limitation of the Intel chipset, and the board cannot "obviously" handle it. 

The only notebooks that support 800 MHz RAM are the new Intel Montevina-based units, or use desktop or non-Intel chipsets.

Well, based on todays definition of a gaming computer, no it is not.  I also have a Alienware laptop, that at the time I got it was cosidered a Gaming Laptop, and this one is 10 times faster.  However, it is very fast for a laptop.  Specs: 4gig 800mhz ram (limited to 667mhz for unknown reason), Core 2 Duo 2.5ghz t9300 Penryn Processor, NVidia GeForce 8600gtm 256mb, 320gig 7200rpm hdd, Audiology Software Based Sound, and running Vista Ultimate.  All the bells and whistles that came with it, built in camera, wifi-n, bluetooth, EVDO, finger print reader.  All that good stuff.  I got the best machine that I could build when I ordered it.  That is why I am annoyed.  I am guessing since everyone is insisting that it is not in the BIOS that there is a jumper of some kind on the board that will change the speed.  If that is the case, it is a much more simple matter to fix.  Every test I have run on my machine tells me that the board can physicaly handle a 800mhz bus on the RAM.  I am running games like Crysis, Extreme Commander, FFXI, Guildwars, Oblivion, etc and they all run very good, better than on my XPS Desktop.  The curious thing is that Oblivion (though dated) runs absolutaly amazing, highest settings, and Crysis runs at higher settings but extremely choppy and runs fine at the lowest setting.  Extreme Commander crashes randomly, the audio gets wayout of sync.  I have all the settings fairly low and it still does that stuff.  The only explanation that I could find for all these problems is that my RAM was bottlenecking my system.  Even my Windows Experience rating was saying my RAM was not as fast as it could be.  My lowest score in that was my RAM.    I have ran several benchmarking programs, including Futuremark, and the source of my slower ratings seems to be due to my RAM.

I just would like to know what the reason was, if any, why Dell capped the speed on the RAM if the board can obviously handle it.  Was it to keep costs down, was it because the just wanted to?

That is unfortunate. I've seen a few Dell models that are running PC5300 (667) modules but I didn't know it wouldn't autoconfig. It's possible in their BIOS option they've capped it manually at 667. The FSB clock speed is set within the BIOS settings these days. In retail MOBOs they allow you to set it to autoconfig or you can manually change clock speeds. Back in the day, way back in the day, you used to be able to change jumpers to adjust clock speed but now that's all built into the BIOS.

Yes, that is true. If the processor has 800 FSB but the MOBO can only handle 667 then there's no way around it. In rare cases the MOBO manufacturer will release a BIOS update to allow a faster FSB. But who knows if they would release something like that for a Dell product.

That is the one thing dell does do,they lock the multiplier on there CPU's on notebook's,so this will be impossible.

They might market it at 800,the FSB is 800.The MOBO WILL NOT run over 667,no way around it.