A new method and apparatus are used to check for segment limit violations during memory access. When a segment descriptor is retrieved during the initialization of a segment, the segment limit from the segment descriptor is used to create five limits. The five limits are the last possible address within the segment for each size of memory access. During a subsequent memory access, the limit corresponding to the segment being accessed and the length of memory access is selected. The selected limit is compared against the address of the memory access to determine if a limit violation has occurred. If a limit violation has occurred, a flag is set that, when read, will cause an exception.