Introduction

Since the introduction of the Intel Atom CPU people have wanted more from this low power chip. Intel and their OEM's that use the Atom have always designed systems around the Atom that are not meant for heavy usage. It is true you can browse the web and do some productivity work, but nothing major like video editing/authoring.

But as the push for more threaded (or we should say, better threaded) applications grow, the single core Atom was and is quickly being pushed out. At the beginning of this year (2010) Intel released their first dual core Atom CPUs. These were not just a pair of cores dropped into the CPU, though. Intel also dropped in Hyper Threading to allow for better multi-threaded performance. The new Atoms also finally received the x64 instructions and have had a GPU tacked on (although to some, this is not a good thing).

What many want to know is, how will these perform when under real world conditions? We took ZOTAC's Mini-DTX NM10-DTX WiFi motherboard, complete with Atom D510 and put it to the test. At $129.99 on Newegg.com, the board offers you an almost complete system ready to be dropped in. Without further preamble, we will now take a close look at the ZOTAC NM-10-DTX WiFi and the Atom D510.