ASUS made several socket 478 motherboards, with revisions over the years.
The socket 478 motherboard uses the Intel 865 chipset; it was originally released for the Pentium IV processor, which debuted in 2001, and different boards supported variations on the Pentium IV and Celeron. ASUS is a manufacturer of motherboards, both sold directly to consumer and sold to computer manufacturers and produced several socket 478 motherboards, updating them as Intel updated the 865 chipset. ASUS has ceased manufacturing socket 478 motherboards, as Intel no longer produces processors for them; they can still be found for sale as vendors retain inventory.
ASUS P4P800 SE Motherboard
This motherboard was one of the last two models ASUS produced and ran with the Intel 865PE chipset (the PE at the end stands for Performance Edition). This chip set supported an 800 Mhz front side bus, the fastest of any Pentium IV chipset, and dual-channel 400 MHz DDR memory. Because it was designed explicitly for Intel's Pentium IV CPU, it included support for Intel's Hyper-Threading out of order execution instructions. This feature is disabled on the Celeron CPUs, and Celeron-focused motherboards disabled the pin connector that turned it on. In terms of on-board hardware, it supported four DIMM sockets and could take a maximum of 4 GB of RAM. Its other expansion slots include 5 PCI ports and one 8x AGP port, while its hard drive connectors included a single ultra DMA plug and two SATA ports.
ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe
ASUS' other 865PE chipset motherboard was the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe, which supported the same CPU and RAM configuration (4 GB Max in four DIMM slots, limited to 400 MHz DDR RAM). It could handle the same CPUs, the Prescott CPU cores. ASUS enabled more hardware on the motherboard, including a third-party RAID controller connected to the SATA ports. It has the same expansion ports---one AGP 8x and five PCI--as the ASUS P4P800-SE. Because this motherboard was marketed to high-end users, it has a number of additional features in the BIOS.
ASUS P4P800-VM
This was ASUS' first Prescott-compatible motherboard and used the 865G chip set. It allows for slightly faster (and harder to find) RAM than the two later motherboards and has only three PCI slots, plus the 8x AGP slot. It was one of the first Pentium IV boards to have the SATA port for faster hard drive connectivity and can support both the Intel Celeron and Pentium IV. It is the highest-end motherboard with Socket 478 Celeron support but is considered a lower-end board than the other two.
Tags: socket motherboards, 865PE chipset, ASUS P4P800-E, ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe, four DIMM