Ok. Yes, there is extra silicon. But it's so insignificant that it doesn't matter.
But I think you are overestimating how low-end these chips are. See http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2008/02/small-wonder-ins... for example, which shows that the Silverthorne architecture (1st Gen Atom) has pretty much the same transistor count as a Pentium 4.
No one thought that the fact the Pentium 4 had to support x86 was a significant factor vs other architectures. For the chips we are talking about, the cache memory takes more transistors, so the quality thing is pretty insignificant too.
But I think you are overestimating how low-end these chips are. See http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2008/02/small-wonder-ins... for example, which shows that the Silverthorne architecture (1st Gen Atom) has pretty much the same transistor count as a Pentium 4.
No one thought that the fact the Pentium 4 had to support x86 was a significant factor vs other architectures. For the chips we are talking about, the cache memory takes more transistors, so the quality thing is pretty insignificant too.