When you need to upgrade a computer to a newer or faster processor and any other components, you should check whether the existing motherboard supports them. You can refer to the motherboard manual for technical specifications. If not then the motherboard needs to be upgraded keeping the future requirements in mind.
The most important things that must be considered while upgrading a motherboard are:
Motherboard Chipset - It is the backbone of a computer. If you want a high performance computer then you should choose a chipset that supports DDR SDRAM or RDRAM.
Processor - A modern system should use a socket-based processor with a L2 cache and with the highest speed CPU bus (FSB).
Processor Sockets/Slots - In order to get good performance of the system, socket type processors should be preferred against slot based processor types. Socket 939 and Socket 754 for the Athlon 64, Socket 478 for the Pentium 4 and Celeron processors are commonly found on motherboards these days. 
