[zokier]

> CPU intensive

it's a 1GHz single core CPU from 2010. While Atom might have some IPC advantage over ARM, I doubt that as a whole it would be competitive against high-perf ARM boards, like the ODROIDs (up to 1.7GHz quad-core, beginning at 89 dollars).

[benjamincburns]

[Edit: In the embedded world "as a whole" rarely makes sense. Design takes a very top-down approach where only specific features of a hardware platform (those necessary for the OEM product/solution) are considered for value comparison. This is why most SoC vendors have so damn many chips in each of their SoC product families.]

It depends on the problem you're solving, how much time/effort you're willing to dedicate to your solution, and what type of solution you choose.

If you have an embarrassingly parallel problem that optimizes well for ARMv7, you're 100% correct. If you're working on a more serial solution utilizing libraries optimized for SSE, Intel cache heuristics, Intel pipelining techniques, or similar (many of which don't exist or have equivalent siblings on ARM), I'm betting on the single-core 1GHz Atom pony.