What Is Intel Atom Processor?

[iGuest 3]

Can it support gaming?

[k_nitin_r 8]

The Intel Atom processor does pretty much anything that your laptop processor can. If you take an Intel Core Duo processor from 2006 you can get almost the same performance from an Intel Atom processor. You can play games on it, but do not expect to play the latest and the greatest of games on it. Many netbooks combine the Intel Atom processor with a dedicated graphics processor so the graphics processing is offloaded and the processor can handle pure computational tasks. The graphics processor is best suited for performing matrix copying and matrix transformations so it can beat even the newest of general purpose processors so if you combine an Intel Atom processor with a dedicated graphics processor, you can play some of the games that you would not be able to play on a computer with a new Intel Core i3 processor alone. However, you do have to consider the advancements in the Sandy Bridge platform that Intel has used for manufacturing the second generation of Intel Core i3 processors so that does narrow the performance gap a bit.If you are planning to do some serious gaming, plan for at least an Intel Core i3 processor and if that is beyond your budget, invest in an AMD E450 processor that does go beyond the performance that an Intel Atom processor has to offer but still does not quite compare to the modern day notebook or desktop processor. If I had to decide between getting a computer with an Intel Atom processor, an AMD E450 processor, or an Intel Core i3 processor, I would get the one with the Intel Core i3 processor because it could handle my general purpose requirements with some light to medium gaming. If I was truly serious about gaming, I would have considered the option of getting a second hand computer with an Intel Core i3 or Intel Core i5 processor from the first generation of Core i3/i5 processors and then getting a dedicated graphics processor to manage the graphics. You would be surprised at how low people are willing to sell their old computers when they have to move away, especially if they have desktop computers.