Can a 2009 MacBook Pro use more memory than Apple's 'maximum RAM' figure of 8 GB?

I have a 2009 MBP with 8GB of RAM. I run Windows under Parallels pretty much all the time (I use Visual Studio for work). I recently installed an SSD to speed it up a bit and its running beautifully. However I could do with having a few extra gigs available to the Windows VM and was wondering if it would be worth buying 2 x 8GB SIMs to enable this. Apple states that the maxiumum for MBPs is 8GB, but I have seen figures online (possibly at OWC) which would suggest that Apple's specs are just guidelines which can be over-ruled.

Does anyone have any experience of 'overloading' their Macs with RAM? OSX can address terabytes of memory so I thought perhaps it was availability of chips which is the limiting factor ...

Update

These are the specs for my Macbook Pro 5,5

Solution 1:

As bmike refers to, YMMV, but...

Yes. I had a 2008 MBP which has a listed 'maximum' of 4GB even though the slots would accept up to 8GB. This machine worked wonderfully for a couple of years. It was replaced though still works.

I am not sure if installing above the supported maximum voids your warranty, but it may be something you want to look into. I just didn't care when I did it.

Solution 2:

I want to affirm that you can run 16GB of RAM on a 2009 Macbook Pro 13 inch. I just installed 16GB of Ram, a new battery and a 1 TB SSD Hard Drive and the machine runs like a porche, even though the Genius at the Apple Store told me that my 2009, 2011, and now 2013 Macbook pros were a bunch of "Mini-vans."

Here is the caveat- sometimes machines do not "want" to recognize the cards and either gave the 3 ALARM sound on start up, refused to boot, or the 1 Alarm sound at start up. 3 Alarm sounds indicate that the machine cannot recognize the slot and 1 Alarm indicates that the machine cannot recognize the RAM. But, if you put in an 8G RAM stick in the bottom slot and a 4G stick in the upper slot and then boot, it will recognize the two slots. Then, if you add the other 8, it will recognize both, or some combo of this kind of trickery. I have had to play around with the process of swapping out ram sticks until you "trick the machine"to boot.

At any rate, once the Macbook is past warranty and starts collecting dust, why not see what it can do! I am running three MBP's that run like race horses as "frankenmacs"

Solution 3:

For anyone wondering about this in 2019 (this old discussion is the first thing that comes up on a Google search when looking for "mid-2009 Macbook memory upgrade, maximum, 8gb, 16gb" or some combo thereof), no, you can't get your 2009 Macbook Pro to recognize more than 8gb of memory -- and no, there's not a magic act of "tricking" your Macbook into booting with one 8gb stick and one 4gb stick -- either way you'll get three beeps and a non-booting Macbook Pro. This is for the mid-2009 Macbook Pro 17" 5,2.