RAM maximums on Pentium 4 based motherboards

I need help with a BET, so put on your thinking caps. Today a co-worker and I got in to a discussion. We have another co-worker that has a 3 year old Compaq, and he wants to upgrade his RAM. My friend told him that it would probably only support 1Gb, but I said 'NO, that's not true... motherboards have been supporting more than 1GB for a long long time." Long story short, he said that inexpensive systems, ie a 499 machine from Wal-mart never really came with the ability to have more than 1GB of RAM until recently. I told him that systems have been coming the ability to go beyond 1GB of RAM for about 7 years, and then immediately retracted, and said, 'okay, maybe 5 years'.

Upon some research, I see that the introduction of the Pentium 4 back in August of 2000, also introduced us to northbridge chipsets from intel that were capable of a maximum of 2GB of RAM. So it looks like I'm correct. There's 21 chipsets (give or take) that are for pentium 4 based systems, and they all appear to support 2GB of RAM except the 845MP, which looks like it was only 1GB, but it was also for laptops.

He said, and I don't really dispute, that even though the chipset was capable of supporting 2GB, that a lot, and stressed a LOT, of motherboards still only were designed to support 1GB.

I REALLY want to go out on a limb here and say I think ALMOST all Pentium 4 Motherboards since, oh say, 2002 (6 years) have supported 2GB RAM max (or more), not just 1GB.

BUT this is where I need your help. I told him to show me an example of a motherboard that was pentium 4 based, that has intel chipset on it, that only supported 1GB due to it's design, not the chip capabilities. He can't. Granted those types of motherboards are old, but someone out there, if one exists, knows of one, and can help his case. I'd like to know about it. (As a side bar, we'd like to know about AMD motherboards and their max RAM limits during the same 5, 6, or 7 years... but I can't find that data.)

CAN ANY OF YOU HELP????

AFAIK most P4 chipsets support up to 4GB RAM depending on the model of board.

Go to www.intel.com and look up the specs on each chipset if you want a definite answer.

Also, something else to think about... does anyone have a pentium 4 based system, like an old HP, Compaq, etc... with proprietary stuff (motherboard, etc...) that does not support more than 1GB. I'm betting not...

thanks for the other input guys...