Thanks to all that replied, I appreciate the help.
Ken'
I think the differences between these boards are really significant,
not trivial.
It bears emphasizing that if you're desirous of the fastest RAID
setup, the -E has the advantage of utilizing the Intel ICH5R
southbridge's direct connection of its built-in SATA controller. The
initial P4C800-D had that same southbridge, but for some reason it did
not utilize the direct connection. Instead, it routed the drives
connected via SATA through the EIDE bus, which represents a bottleneck
compared to the direct connection. The technical aspects are over my
head, but I have read that Asus did that to save money. Competitors
didn't implement SATA RAID that way, and it does seem to have been a
foolish thing to do. The P4C800-E rectifies that initial goof.
The original implementation of Gigabit LAN was directly analogous.
Instead of routing it via the speedy CSA connection that Intel
designed for it, it was dumped on the PCI bus which slowed transfers
and clogged up that bus. Why?? I guess it save a little money in
manufacture.
If I weren't waiting for motherboards that will support the follow-on
Prescott CPUs, I'd certainly buy either the P4C800-E or the Gigabyte
GA 8NXP (with that neat dual BIOS).
..
Ron