Jerry,
The SE is a new development after the anniversaries. The beryllium tweeter for one thing is atleast technically flawless, it does not ring. The DSP has double the capacity, EBA is introduced in the DSP8k's. They surpass the DSP 40th Anniversary performancewise (The 40th Anniversaries can upgrade to SE as well).
Theoretically the difference should be even more vast than what the 40th Anniversary offered because the development improvements are in several key areas.
I've still not heard them yet but I'm in the planning stages of how I'm going to go about the upgrade. In my setup I'm currently shuffling around the surround speakers with trade-in/upgrades. That means getting rid of older speakers that can not get upgrades to SE (My trusty DSP5000 comes to mind and a time limited trade-in of my DSP5200's to SE's).
After that I will probably take one upgrade at a time, DSP8k's, DSP7200HC.
So the answer to your question is; - Yes! 5 DSP8k SE will surpass 5 DSP8k 40:th Anniversary.