Let me preface this with the fact that although I do play quite a few games on the computer, I am mostly in the dark about the more technical aspects of the hardware. Now,

For a number of reasons that are mostly irrelevant to anybody but me, I am getting a new laptop, and have narrowed it down to two.

Of these two, one has listed as the graphics card, "AMD Radeon HD 8750M + HD 8000 Series Dual Graphics" It is also cheaper to the point that adding on more RAM, or up the harddrive will still put me under the price of the other one. It also has a "AMD Quad-Core A10-5750M Accelerated Processor" , but processors confuse me even more than graphics cards, so moving on...

The other has "NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GT 650M Graphics with 2048MB of dedicated video memory", which from the point of view of somebody who knows very little about actual computer work (and is mostly basing things off of some website) seems to have a better performance. It also comes with a "3rd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM Processor (2.4GHz, 6MB L3 Cache)", but once again I am ignorant as to what that means exactly.

Now, as previously stated, I play quite a few games. Though I am console first (WiiU, which means that a lot of things come out on pc that I can't play on the console), I tend to be a bit behind the curve on what I'm playing (I.E. not playing big games the first day they come out).

If at all possible, I would be very grateful for any help or opinions you could toss my way (and please keep the laughter to a minimum if you could).

Well neither of those cards are anywhere near top of the line. I would bet that the 650m is more powerful. How much dedicated RAM does the AMD graphics card have? I guess my main comment is that at the very least both next gen consoles are going to have 5 GB minimum RAM for gaming. Sony may end up with more depending on its final OS footprint. Either way, you are going to want as much RAM as possible, and graphics RAM is especially important. I would say 6 GB minimum for a PC that will run next gen games well. I am pretty sure the Intel CPU is a much better CPU than the AMD. But games don't require super-beefy CPU's so as long as that AMD one is decent you should be fine. I think my overall opinion is that the second computer is most likely better, probably even significantly better, but neither computer will play next gen games all that well.

Look here.

@raven10: pretty much no card available today has the oomphf to utilize 6 GB of video ram.

Any scene that used up that much memory would mutilate the framerate on any computer on the planet.
graphics card manufacturers know how much memory their cards should have, if it is reasonable to bolt on 12 GB's on a card, they'll do it.

lets say you have card A and B

A has 2 GB's but is twice as powerful as B
B has 4 GB's but is as said half as powerful as A.

so in a game that requires 1 GB of vram, A has 60 fps and B has 30.
Cause the game is within the limit of both cards, but A was twice as powerful.

In a game that requires 3 GB of vram

card A chugs at 1 FPS, cause the memory on the card ran out, and it has to take data from the harddrive and regular ram, which is much to slow for real time work
while B rolls at 17 FPS, this is card B's time to shine, it is finally better than card A, but oh wait.... 17 FPS is unplayable anyway, so never mind.

Basically, your graphics card has to have enough oomphf, regardless of how much memory they have.

Something as weak as a laptop midrange card has no business having more than 2 GB's.You can forget getting a playable frame rate in any game requiring 5 GB's of vram, even on a 680 or a 7970 ( if they had 5 GB's or vram that is, they have 2 and 3 GB respectively. )

Here is a great link that is updated periodically that separates cards from NVidia and AMD into tiers, so you can see how models stack up. It may not be completely accurate and it doesn't list absolutely every card, but it's a good place to start.

Tom's Hardware card hierarchy chart

EDIT: I see the 8000 series isn't listed there yet so I guess it won't be a tremendous help to you for your specific question...

Thanks for the help guys. For now, I think I'll go with the latter, because I have no illusions about running something like battlefield 4 on high on it, but it'll be nice to run some older games with better graphic settings. Eventually I hope to get a computer that's actually good for running games, but for now this will be fine.

@devildoll: I was referring to the total amount of RAM on the computer not just the graphics RAM. The Geforce Titan, by the way, has 6 GB of RAM on it so at least one card does. The XBone or whatever you want to call it us using 5 GB of standard ass DDR3 RAM for games. So as long as he has 6 GB of RAM total he should be okay. Besides, in this case I believe the 650 is at least as powerful as a 8750. I know that Killzone Shadow Fall, which is obviously not a PC game but just as an example, used something like 4.5 GB of RAM for its E3 build which is where I came up with my numbers.

@raven10: okay, you fooled me by saying graphics ram being especially important, and then continue to talk about system memory.

Titan does have 6 GB's , but i bet even it would not be able to render a scene at a pleasant framerate if it required that much vram, unless you had 2-3 of em.

the new consoles have between 4.5 to 5.5 dedicated to one single game, if it was completely translatable to pc's 6 GB's wouldnt cut it, since windows, skype, µtorrent and steam wants their piece of the pie as well.

currently, most pc games are 32 bit, including BF3, which means they cant utilize more than 2 GB, which is hilarious. ( unless they are large address aware, in which case it is 4 GB )

I don't think the new consoles will have a huge impact on the way people need to configure rigs for the future. people buy 8-16 GB of ram today anyway.

@raven10:

Killzone Shadow Falls RAM usage on said demo

@zenmastah: Ah, thank you, that is helpful. 3 GB used for video right now plus 1.5 for CPU. So we are talking top-end cards as far as having enough graphics RAM.

@devildoll: Yea I would say that by the end of the generation 6 GB won't even come close to cutting it, but for the first year or two when half the games are coming out for current gen systems as well, I think it's fair to say that 6 GB should be enough. The games would probably look somewhere between the current and next gen versions at that point. I think the big change will need to be in graphics cards which are going to need a lot more than the 1 GB that many mid-range cards have to function well. And if they want next gen performance then they are going to want probably 4 GB of GDDR5 RAM within a couple of years. Right now I know Sony has only 4.5-5.5 GB of RAM total for games set aside, but they've said that unlike Microsoft they will continue to increase that pool as they lower the footprint of their OS, so I would bet we'll see 6+ GB available to all games eventually. That probably won't be for two or three years, though, but by then 4 GB of graphics RAM seems like a fair requirement. I'm sure 8 GB of system RAM will be plenty for the entire generation as long as people keep their multi-tasking under control.