Prescott Vs Atom

I have an older computer it's kinda like my first car actually lol, this prescott has been threw rough *** and I'm never going to get rid of it. Have an i7 rig for myself planning on using this prescott build for a GF that would be doing some mild gaming. Currently has a Socket 478 Pentium 4 Prescott 3.0 Ghz @ 3.2 Ghz with 2.0 GB DDR 400 Memory and a Radeon 3850 agp. I'm wondering if the Pentium 4 would hold its own vs an Intel Atom setup with the Nvidia Ion for gaming. Would be running games like Counter Strike: Source. If the Nvidia Ion platform takes the Pentium 4 build in performance I would consider buying one as it's cost is so low. I'm also not concerned about the power usage difference I know the Atom uses much less power then the Pentium 4 but all I'm concerned about here is pure performance. Any thoughts? Stick with the Pentium 4 or go for the new atom with an ion?

A P4 @3.2Ghz is still a reasonable rig for low end gaming, particularly with a 3850.

No, an Atom is much less powerful - ditto for the Ion.

Overclocking the Prescott further will not give you much of an increase in performance either ... plus your going to hit a thermal ceiling at about 3.6.

Here is a list of all of the 478 CPU's anyway.

http://processorfinder.intel.com/list.aspx?ProcFam=483

Unfortunately there is not much more you can do to get further performance out of it that I can think of.

You could build a cheap 45nm core2 rig ir go for an AM2+/3 AMD Phenom rig (dual, triple or quad) rather than an Atom or Ion ... they are pathetic.

lmao both have crap performance, only the atom has a reason why

both are poor performers in general

Atom is slower, but consumes MUCH MUCH less power.... especially than a Prescott at 3.2GHz