Gigabyte P43 or P45 need to support 16GB

[3arewe]

I currently have an EVGA motherboard with an Intel Q9550 (2.83GHZ Quad core w/ 12MB Cache) and 8GB's of RAM. I do a lot of testing using Virtual Machines and the 8GB is no longer enough memory to run everything. I am looking at either a P43 or P45 chipset because it will allow me to keep my current processor and uopgrade to 16GB or ram. My question is which one will give me the ability to truely run 16GB not just say it will. I have read reviews but everyone is running 2, 4, or 8 GB but I have not found reviews of anyone running 16GB. I run VMWare and Windows 7 64bit.I was hoping to find a board that will support DDR3 as well. Any recommendations would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

What you ask is difficult because unless you are actually running it yourself it is hard to confirm that it is the case but as far as I am aware as long as you use a proprietory brand of memory like Corsair then you shouldn't have any problems. Make sure that the memory is on the QVL of the vendor for the motherboard that you choose. eg http://www.corsair.com/configurator/default.aspx

The problem with recommending an actual board is that I always feel it is a very personal choice and you need to know the exact requirements. What about this board:
 
http://www.giga-byte.co.uk/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3487#sp