Wikipedia is a wonderful place for info on CPU's man, check it out. Intel wasnt for gaming at that point in time so i had an athlon xp, just about to build an Intel PC for myself for the first time since my pentium 200mmx.

This is true...this is very true.

i would be willing to bet that older mobo doesnt support the newer, faster cpus, and is only set up to work with northwood and williamette core P4s

I would also be willing to bet from that side of the fence but we gotta be positive and hope that its just that so the poor guy doesnt have to fork out for a new mobo.
and anyway the board is showing the P4 correctly just locking it to a lower (bios maximum?) speed and the p4 is a northwood core im guessing, i reckon at the very worst he will need a bios update.

yeah probably. The FSB probably doesnt support the faster speeds of the 2.5ghz model, so it is still at a lower sped

that maybe could be it right there, the FSB might be set in the BIOS to 400 instead of the 533 which that chip has which would make it underclock. But tbh the fact that the chip works in that mobo i still reckon the very worst case scenario is a BIOS update

Double Post Soz!!