Released in 2004, the Dell OptiPlex GX280 is a desktop personal computer from technology company Dell, Inc., designed for the education, government and corporate sectors. The PC comes with either of two types of processors from semiconductor company Intel Corp. One of the choices was an Intel Pentium 4 chip. The other choice was an Intel Celeron D chip. However, the CPU socket that bears the processor and connects it to the motherboard -- Socket 775 -- provides the GX280 with a processor compatibility range beyond the aforementioned CPUs.
Socket 775
Also known as Socket N and more commonly known as LGA 775, Socket 775 is a CPU socket that Intel Corp. introduced in 2004, coincidentally the year of the Dell OptiPlex GX280's debut. It is mainly named after the 775 gold-plated pins it provides for accommodating the processor, arranged in a grid-like format. This type of surface-mount packaging is called Land Grid Array, which explains the "LGA" prefix.
Pentium
Intel Corp. primarily released the socket for the Pentium, which at the time was its premier brand and was at its fourth major iteration with the Pentium 4. Eventually, processor compatibility was extended to the higher-end version of the Pentium 4, such as Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition, as well as the dual-core Pentium that succeeded Pentium 4 in 2006 with double the processing power. The processing speed range is 1.66 GHz to 3.8 GHz. The fastest Pentium chip that is compatible with the Dell OptiPlex GX280 is the 3.8-GHz Intel Pentium 4 571, which also has a 800-MHz data transfer speed and 1-MB L2 cache, and supports HT Technology.
Celeron
The Socket 775 on the Dell OptiPlex GX280 also supports a wide range of Celeron chips. This includes the higher-end Celeron D, which is based on the Pentium processing core; and the dual-core Celeron. However, the Celeron is placed below the Pentium as the low-end consumer-oriented CPU brand. The processing speed range for the Socket 775-compatible Celeron CPUs is 1.6 GHz to 3.6 GHz. Thus, the fastest Celeron that can be fitted on an OptiPlex GX280 is the Intel Celeron D 365, which has a 3.6-GHz processing speed, as well as a 533-MHz data transfer speed and 512-KB L2 cache.
Core
In 2006, Intel Corp. introduced Core, which eventually displaced Pentium as the company's premier brand of consumer-oriented processors. The company made some Core chips -- particularly from the dual-core Core 2 Duo and the quad-core Core 2 Quad divisions -- compatible with the Socket 775. Processing speeds for the Socket 775-compatible Core CPUs that can go on the GX280 start at 1.8GHz. The fastest of such processors is the 3.33-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8600, which has a 1,333-MHz data transfer speed and 6-MB L2 cache.
Tags: Dell OptiPlex GX280, Intel Corp, data transfer, data transfer speed, OptiPlex GX280, processing speed