We were surprised that the ION was powerful enough to run call of Duty 4 on a tiny netbook.

Atom in Intel’s mind is supposed to run small form factor PCs or netbooks, and that it should give you enough power only to run office and internet, some music or basic SD video.

They didn’t intend it for playing games, but once you put ION in that platform, the experience changes as we’ve seen that Atom + ION can run Call of Duty 4. This won’t be at the highest possible settings and with the best graphics experience out there, but it will be playable and basic gaming will be possible on such tiny machines.

This completely changes the game and gives an extra edge to netbooks, something that Intel doesn’t really like, as once you get HD video or gaming on a netbook, Atom becomes a huge threat for Core 2 and Core i7 notebooks, at least some of them. (Especially low-end CULVs with IGPs. sub.ed.)

Some other games will also run on Atoms with ION, but with ION 2 that is expected before the end of the year, the basic gaming experience on future Atoms can only get better.