No sir, it is simply just a firmware upgrade. Well I don't know about the popsloader, I haven't tried it yet.
But gameboots, cintros, isos, homebrew, and emus work fine. If something happens to go wrong, you can dwongrade. The first time I upgraded to this firmware I bricked somehow, but I used pabdora and tried it again and now it's fine.
Hey follow this for future reference on pops:
This will let you play ANY PSX game on your psp. Firmware 4.01 m33 is even supported!
First
download this. It is the popsloader plugin with every single version of pops. After acquiring you game from any number of places check
this page to see what pops is best for your particular game.
Next enable the plugin ("popsloader.prx") from the Recovery Menu. To access this, hold down R when you hardboot your PSP. Now when you first launch a PSX game, a menu will ask you what POPS version you would like to use. If the game works fine normally, select the version from flash. The Popsloader plugin will remember your selection, and use this the next time you launch the game.
To change your selection (if the one you are using does not work properly) hold down "R" when you boot the game and you will be able to select a different version from the menu.
~compliments of CodeMayHem.net