new asus motherboards with P35 chipset?

Question

the new performance line of asus motherboards look incredibly hot and have a ton of features. However i am debating between buying a P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP@n, the energy-saving one, and Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP, the performanve one. They seem to have the same features and names, but why is the P5E version 100 dollars more?

Answer 1

The P5E3 is the just released X38 chipset which has a feature where you can overclock your DDR3 right in windows without rebooting. It also has 2 PCI-ExpressX16 video card slots and one PCI-Express X4 or X1 card slot instead of just one PCI-ExpressX16 and one X4 or X1 slot. That means that crossfire setups will perform lots better than on the P35 chipset boards because you will be running both cards in PCI-E X16. Here's a review of a Gigabyte X38 board running DDR2 that tells a bit about it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/26/intel_x38_chipset/

Answer 2

Who told you the P5E3 was the energy-saving one?? It is the performance one, it uses the X38 chipset as opposed to the P35 chipset in the P5K3. What is the difference, well the P5E3 will allow you to run Crossfire with both PCI Express slots at x16, the P5K3 is limited to one at x16 and the other at x4. Plus the PCI Express on the X38 is the new PCI Express 2.0 standard. The wireless on the P5E3 is N wireless as opposed to the G on the P5K3. Finally, the P5E3 officially supports a FSB of 1600Mhz, when ever those come out.

Answer 3

The P5E3 has a higher FSB clock, the newer X38 chipset, it supports faster RAM, 3 PCI-e x16 slots supporting ATI's Crossfire technology and 802.11n/g/b wifi support.
Its very well worth the extra $100 dollars, much more "future-proof."

Answer 4

2 x PCI-E x16 (blue @ x16 mode, black @ x4 or x1 mode) I'm not completely sure (not knowing how the SLI bridges work)... it might be possible, but lacking x16 mode on the second slot would hinder its performance if it even is possible. It doesn't state that it supports SLI mode in the motherboard's specifications.