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Looking to upgrade an older box that has an Asus P4S8X-MX mobo.

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That'd be the Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor Extreme Edition 3.40 GHz (Gallatin) 3.4 GHz, 800 FSB, HT.

Now this CPU is also "extreme" in price (i've seen offers for $495) and since it's such an old computer i wouldn't invest too much money. The Intel® Pentium® 4 530 (Prescott) 3.0GHz HT, 1MB L2 for $80 looks rather reasonable.

Also keep in mind, these high-powered Prescott and Gallatin CPUs require decent cooling, so if the original CPU was some Celeron, the original heatsink and fan may not suffice.

Check the list of all supported CPUs on the Asus P4S8X-MX here.

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For that cost for an older P4 processor, you can get a new Motherboard, Quad-core CPU and 8GB of ram. (Phenom 2, AMD 785 MB if you need video) – tracker1 Jan 17 '10 at 23:45
yep, 500 dollar is ridiculous :) – Molly7244 Jan 18 '10 at 0:03
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Indeed. Pentium 4 was a horrible chip and never reached the frequencies Intel hoped for. You shouldn't expect great improvements from even the best P4 compared to the an older one. I would definitely put the money towards a full cpu/mobo/ram upgrade later. – bobince Jan 18 '10 at 2:37
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@bobince - this not exactly accurate, the Prescott HT CPU is quite a performer compared to the Northwood (nevermind the Willamette), however, this performance comes at the price of pretty high power consumption and massive cooling (hence the nickname P4 Spaceheater :). – Molly7244 Jan 18 '10 at 2:48
+1 and accepted; thanks for the cpu-upgrade.com link. And excellent discussion. Good point about $80 being most of the way to a mobo/cpu combo. (Drat, Fry's website is down atm.) I just hate throwing away good PCB and silicon. – gWiz Jan 18 '10 at 3:06
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