I am considering an ASUS P5P800 or an ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard. Discounting the fact that the P4P800-E has RAID (which I am not concerned about), the primary difference between the two motherboards is that the P5P800 requires an Intel LGA775 Pentium 4 CPU, while the P4P800-E Socket requires an Intel socket 478 CPU. The question is, will performance be any different (better or worse) with an appropriate 3.2 GHz processsor (everything else being the same such as OS, memory, AGP card, etc.)between the two motherboards?

At this point, a better upgrade in every since of the word, would be wiser to go with socket T boards, as intel is no longer making procs for 478 boards, and 478 boards only allow cpus up to 3.4ghz, also if or when you decide to upgrade in the future you will only be left with so many options, as your 478 board will not support ddr2 ram or pci express, not to metion new cores and dual cores that come out for new chips. Get a mobo that will last for future upgrades, such as a board that support intels new 1066 fsb. Intel in more then likely gonna to require a new socket pretty soon when their dual cores arrive. So it may be wise to hold on to your money till the goods start to pour in. In a fast-paste world of computers its a good idea to be patient. abit is7 i856pe Prescott 2.8ghz @ 4004Mhz 286x14 FSB @ 1144Mhz 512x2 in dual config @ 430mhz 9800 se unlocked & clocked @ 444mhz/800mhz

Galileo, Thanks for the pontification. I hope you enjoyed your writing. Do you have an opinion on my question? I will reiterate it. Will performance be any different in a Socket 478 motherboard vs. an LGA775 motherboard (all things being equal)?

I think the 775's have twice the onboard cache so for example a 3.0GHz 478 vs 3.0GHz 775 the 775 would be faster. If the end user could actually ever see this performance in reality is a different story. Jimi_l

775 CPU's: The 5 series are still 1mb cache chips. The 6 series chips are 64 bit, 2mb Cache chips. Also, if you wait for a while Intel will release the 8series Pentium D. This is a Dual Core chip running on the new 945/955 chipsets, said to run around 3.0GHz on release. IMO, a 775 5series chip will equal an equivalent 478 for performance. The chipset the mobo uses (915/925 for skt775, or 845/865 for 478 typically) will have a greater effect. Check out which chipsets these boards use. :) P4 LGA775 3.0GHz 2x256Mb DDR2 533MHz XFX 6800GT PCI-E