Prescott and Northwood Voltage??

I built my latest computer about 3 months ago but didn't feel like mounting the MoBo so I paid a guy computer guy to do it for me. I bought the CPU and ABIT AI7 from him and he mounted it all for me. Instantly I noticed high tems of 150°F with the case side on and 124°F with side and a fan blowing cool air in. I trouble shooted everything I could thing of, posted here in the forums and finally took it down the the local computer tech as a last resort since the CPU burned up while I was working.

He ran diag's on it and told me everything was good except for the CPU and he couln't tell if the MoBo had damage done to it or not. I brought him a 2.4GHz P4 to test the MoBo and it booted right up. From what it looks like the CPU is toast.

He said the volts my MoBo is running is 1.5-1.55V, and said the prescott CPU runs at 1.2-1.4V. Northwood supports the 1.5V.

He did some more research and looked at the user manual for my ABIT AI7 and it specifically says compatible with NORTHWOOD CPU's only.

Then I checked for myself on the ABIT website: http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/prescott_cpu_support.php . Scroll to AI7 and look at Prescott compatiblity, it says it does support it but with version 16 of BIOS. Could this be a change of Micro Code Updates, that might change the voltages to support the Prescott?

The guy I bought it from is sending me the same CPU but a Northwood instead. I read the compatibility testing ABIT did and they never showed a Prescott being used, only Celeron and Northwood.
http://www.abit.com.tw/test_report/AI7/index.php

It's 1:30 in the mornign and I'm very tired, if I did not state any of this correctly or it is too confusing let me know plz, I will restate it.

Thanks,
Lee

What exactly are you asking? Do you think it was a voltage problem or a compatibility problem. I am currently running 1.4V through my prescott and i did at one time run it as high as 1.55V, so i doubt it was the voltage.

Over all I think it is just a compatibilty problem, considering it clearly states not to use a Prescott CPU on the AI7, only use a Northwood. I am only hesitant becuase of the drop of L2 Cache on the Northwood, from 1mb to 512KB.

Will this be much of a performance decrease?

no a big dif, as northwood's do more work than a prescott clock for clock