16 GB possible with OS X Mountain Lion or Mavericks?

Have seen 16GB upgrade kits for sale from Data Memory Systems as long as you are running Mac OS X "Mountain Lion' or the latest release 10.9 "Mavericks',

Even in the popular reference app MacTracker states this possibility, I'm curious if anyone has attempted this upgrade outside of Apples stated limits.

I'm already upgraded to 8GB, but remembering the iMac of the same time frame also running a Core 2, could handle 16GB mainly due to the extra space.

Now with larger memory modules available, I wonder if it's true that these machines could run twice the purposed limits?

Dan, some limits are only seen by slower drives. The limit on my Mac is 3Gb/s thanks to the 7200 RPM drive I installed over the original drive which was held back by the slower rotational speed. A move to a SSD has been something I've thought about for a while but I enjoy the extra space by the Scorpio Black and it reports in OS X in the system profiler as 3Gb/s.

The noticeable change after swapping out from the original drive was a noticeable improvement in both Macbench and even running the system score in Windows 7 via Parallels. HDD I/O was the highest in the overall score second only to the matched pair of memory sticks installed getting me to 8GB.

Concerning the optical drive, I'd prefer to keep it in as some games I play on my system still have a CD/DVD check for the application to boot. While I do have a older USB DVD RW drive that I picked up on eBay. I'd rather not risk it as all the documentation is in Japanese. I bought it for a fraction of the cost of the Apple USB SuperDrive.

I have had my intentions of having this computer last me at least six years as my last Mac did rather well longer than I ever had expected. (A PowerBook G4 which still runs on its PATA limited 320GB internal HDD upgrade I performed as well as running its limit of 2GB of memory. Firing it up every so often reminds me how much the difference running on Intel hardware but also some nostalgic look and feel of the design that evolved into the first MBP.

Leopard does show it's age a bit especially on PPC and the 1.5Ghz single G4 it boasts but still eaten alive in general tasks by the original first generation white MacBook. That is until you fired up a game where the Intel GMA was demolished by having the old 128GB dedicated ATi Radeon 9700.

Back onto the topic at hand, instead of people telling me "It can't be done' by reading documentation by Apple and such, I'm curious of the brave souls who have actually tried doing such a thing by thinking outside the box instead of only reading what specs Apple has posted on my particular MacBook Pro.

The main reason I ask is I thought there would be more daring individuals who experiment with "older' systems just to see how far they can be pushed.

If only I could post pictures of my old "Yikes' PowerMac G4 which was pushed beyond all possible reasonable thought. Just think a old 233Mhz slug getting a real kick in the rear with dual 1Ghz G4 processors. That was only the beginning after being challenged by a PC die-hard saying to me that it was impossible to upgrade a Mac.

I certainly had proven him wrong. :-)