P4P800 SE vs P4P800 Mx
The general answer is yes.
1) Both of these boards have the same CPU socket:
"Intel Socket 478", so they are CPU compatible
at the pin level.
The different support chip-sets (North and South bridge)
do provide different I/O features and bus optimizations,
but this is NOT a problem to the CPU, nor an issue to
worry about.
2) Also, both these boards are smart enough
in the BIOS, to automatically detect the CPU
and to automatically set the clock speeds and
power supply voltages.
The P4P800 board is more then fast enough to take full
advantage of the 2.4 GHz CPU.
The only time you could get into trouble is if you
override the BIOS settings to over-clock or over-voltage
the CPU or memory, without knowing what you are doing.
3) If you are not sure, just let the BIOS do its thing, and auto
set the CPU and memory settings.
However ! ...
4) Be extremely careful when physically swapping the CPU's
and heat sinks:
a) Make sure the computer is physically unplugged,
and the power has been off for a few minutes.
b) Unclip the whole fan/heat-sink assembly as a unit if
you can, and wash the bottom of the heat-sink with
rubbing alcohol to remove the "white gunk"
(heat-sink transfer compound)
Similarly clean off the CPU's after you remove them from
the socket, do NOT drip alcohol onto the mother-board,
because it could dissolve, soften or contaminate it.
The alcohol will NOT hurt the metal heat-sink, nor the
ceramic top of the CPU.
c) To remove the CPU from the socket (and to replace it)
release the socket lever on the socket FIRST.
The CPU should slide in and out of the socket without
ANY force what so ever, and make sure that PIN-1
and the shamfered corner are oriented correctly !!!
If you plug in the CPU the wrong way, and power it up,
it is GAME OVER !!!
d) Take extreme care not to STATIC zap the mother board,
or the CPU. Wrap a thin bare wire around your wrist,
and connect the other end to the computer case,
before handling ANY electronic parts.
(With the computer still turned off and unplugged :)
This is EXTREMELY important, because your body
can accumulate a very small charge at a very high
voltage of several thousand volts before you even feel
a tingle, and when discharged can fry or injure every
chip on the board.
do NOT remove the mother board from the box just
to change the chip, if you can possibly avoid it.
Handling motherboards is ALWAYS risky due to
the risk of static as well as flexing the board and
braking internal "plate-through-hole" connections.
I am an expert many times over so please take my
word for it.
5) After you install the new CPU in its socket, but BEFORE
you re-attach the heat-sink, you need to apply a liberal
amount of NEW white heat-sink compound between the
heat sink and the CPU.
This white goo is a silicon based grease that drastically
improves the heat transfer from CPU to heat sink, i.e.
lowers the thermal resistance in degrees per Watt,
to keep the CPU from overheating.
Many people skip this important step, but if your CPU
overheats, it won;t last long.
The heat-sink compound is available from any electronic
or computer shop.
6) Make sure that you clean and reconnect the CPU fan,
and check that it is working properly.
7) Make sure that your power supply is strong enough to
provide the additional current required by a faster CPU.
Keep in mind, that the amount of power consumed, and
heat generated by the CPU is directly proportional to
frequency and to the square of the operating voltage.
Also, faster CPU's never last as long as slower ones,
due to increased nano-scale current densities and
atomic scale erosion due to these currents. Although
the currents are miniscule from our point of view, so are
the circuit geometries, and if you do the math, (I have)
the effect of sending some of these internal currents
through the nanometer-sized conductors is like forcing
the Mississippi river through a half inch pipe.
The sheer momentum of the electrons is sufficient to
knock whole atoms out place and slowly erode the
tiny semiconductor structures.
All chips WILL fail in time. The faster they run the sooner
they fail, but hopefully "after" they become obsolete.
8) So make sure you have enough fans to keep things cool.
9) Finally it is good to identify your speed bottle necks,
before you start changing things, for example:
If the RAM is marginal, it will not run reliably at the
increased bus speeds. The mother board (BIOS)
compensates for this when calculating the timing
settings, and increases the number of bus-cycle wait
states. The net result is that your faster CPU can result,
in a slower computer under some conditions.
Another thing people tend to ignore is the amount of RAM.
RAM is 10,000,000x faster then hard disk.
When a computer (Windows) starts running out of RAM,
it begins to swap less used data to hard disk, in a process
called virtual memory paging. If it pages too much, it is
called thrashing. A thrashing computer can take hours or
even days to perform a task that should only take a few
seconds.
Increasing the speed of the CPU by 20% often doubles the
cost. The same amount of money is put to better use
increasing the amount (and quality) of RAM, with much
more impressive results.
For a Pentium-4 based XP machine I recommend 2 Gigs
of RAM, only because 32-bit Windows can only access
4-Gigs, 2 of which are reserved for the OS and remapping
the video card. This leaves 2 Gigs for user app's.
IT is possible to configure windows to use a little more, by
setting the /3GB or the /uservalu= switch within the boot.ini
file but this can lead to unforeseen complications.
The problem with 64-bit windows is that it still has limited,
driver support and you need a 64-bit motherboart/CPU
such as a core-2-duo.
Good luck, please rate my answers.
Martin
