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Intel Atom processor - could this be an alternative option?

Intel's Atom CPUs are very attractive due to their low power consumption. It has been successfully used via the Fit-PC2 (headless option). There are however two significant downsides:

  1. Does not support SSE4.1 instruction set which is preferred.
  2. Has a maximum of 1MB L2 cache. This means SRC@145db SNR cannot be done.


Intel recently announced Atom D510 CPU which Gigabyte offers as the mini-ITX GA-D510UD mobo. This is significant in that the Atom D510 offers built-in graphics and therefore allows mobo vendors to utilise Intel's latest NM10 chipset (TDP of just 2.5W)! This mobo should consume ~15 watts but Gigabyte does offer options to lower voltage and frequency making this mobo/CPU the most power efficient one. Aside: previous Atom based mobos used power hungry chipsets (Intel 945GC + southbridge).

Should upsampling to 192k @145db not be a requirement this hardware may provide excellent results! There is a tradeoff in that SSE4 cannot be used. It nevertheless remains an excellent option worthy of further investigation...

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