Like many who have posted in this thread, I too have a mid-2010 Macbook Pro, 6,1 i7-2.66MHz 17", and I came across this thread while searching for why I was limited to 8GB of memory. I have read the entire 20 pages of posts. I don't want to 'rain on anyone's parade', certainly not my own.
In this thread there are some truths, and some presumptions that are stated as truths, some observations, lots of opinions, and one fact. First, let's talk about expectations. Some people in the thread have stated that their 16GB of memory worked for a while before it failed. This does not in any way indicate that it "worked", it could just mean it failed at a different point. For me, the definition of "working" is when it doesn't fail. You may have your own opinion, as everyone is entitled. The single biggest presumption that has been made in the thread which has never been proven is this: Because the system boots, and runs for a bit, and 'About this Mac' says that the system has 16MB in it, the system HAS 16MB in it. For all we know the number in 'About this Mac' is derived from ready the SPD information (serial presence detect) read from the EPROM on the DDR memory. This in no way is proof that the system can actually read and write to the entire range of memory, so that anyone has ever actually experienced having 16GB is just an assumption at this point. No one has run a full memory test and reported it in this thread (yet). It is just as possible that the reason the system worked for a ran for a while was that it ran until the actual physical memory it was able to address got used up and then reached a memory boundary that didn't actually exist, ultimately causing a kernel panic. I don't presume this to be true, but it can't be ruled out at this point. This presumption that the system is 'working' has been repeated so many times in this thread that it's presumed to be true, and no one has ever proven that after several years. I'm sorry if this pops anyones bubble, I want a 17" laptop as much if not more than anyone, but so far the only fact contained in this thread is the Intel data sheet stating that this CPU can only address 8MB of memory. I am an EE, and have designed equipment and systems for decades. I've been paid large sums of money for finding problems with and telling manufacturers how to fix their products. I've read thousands of data sheets and discovered some of the most important things in a data sheet is what's not in the data sheet, because it's likely something the manufacturer doesn't want you to know. The two things I've never found in a data sheet are- a lie- and- a mistake in a highly significant parameter. So when Intel's data sheet says that our microprocessors only support 8GB of memory address space, well it's hard to ignore.
If you want to hope for something, my opinion is you have a better chance of hoping Apple comes out with a 17" laptop than you have of getting a Macbook Pro 6,1 with Nvidia graphics working. I hope that happens, I'll be in line with you to buy one if it does, but as for my current 17", it will make a nice laptop to put in my rolltop desk and use for paying bills, surfing the web, Skype and FaceTime, and fold up and disappear when I'm not using it. But the fact is, the CPU is old and slow, the memory is slow and small, it's USB2 not USB3 or USB3.1 or thunderbolt, even the Nvidia graphics are anemic by todays standards and at this point it's really too slow for a workstation for anything I use like Lightroom, Photoshop, Prelude, Media Encoder, Avid Media Composer, Autocad, etc, and it's time to accept that and move on. The possibility of even getting 16MB of memory working reliably is so incredibly small I'm not going to pursue it any longer. I hope if you still are trying to get 16GB to work that you succeed, because I hate the thought of anyone spending their life tilting at windmills.
