| We sold our Xbox 360 Premium edition and my husband bought the Elite.
Here is what he says:
Elite has 120 G as compared to 20G (in Premium)
Elite has HDMI which delivers up to 1080P resolution where as Premium with component video can only output to a maximum of 1080i .
Of course, you can use a VGA cable on a premium system to also get the 1080P, but most HDTV does not have VGA input.
For DVD movie playing, a HDMI will upscale a movie from 480P to 1080P if your TV has that.
With a component on Premium, will not upscale DVD movie and would stay at 480P resolutions.
Elite DVD drive is actually a lite -on drive where as Premium has either the toshiba, or hitachi DVD.
Hitachi DVD is the oldest installed in Xbox 360, and the noisiest, sounds like a blender.
Toshiba is better, but still noisy.
If you want to know which one your machine is, you can contact me pm.
Elite has an added heat-sink to the GPU. ( Graphic processing unit) Has a much cooler temperature than the oldest Premium, which is the majority of the problem resulting 3 rings of death.
The list goes on.... Anways, he bought his machine for $ 3580.00 plus the extra black controller (as we had 2 controllers before, but sold them with the old machine).
ALL three systems including Core, Premium and Elite are now still using the 90 nn chip. There is a new chip of 65 nn chip codename falcon. It will be installed in the upcoming new systems.
This chip will enable a much cooler and quieter system. No performance difference.  | 
difference between xbox 360 and 360 elite 
