A10-4600m+Radeon 7730M vs Core i5-3210m+NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M ?

[ruri]

Hello, I'm struggling with which laptop to buy. One is with A10-4600m+Radeon 7730M (with 500GB HDD), and the other Core i5-3210m+NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M (with 750GB HDD). The rest are pretty much the same (incl the appearance and the price...)...

I know very little about the hardware. Could anyone help?

Fyi, I'll be using it do some programming, incl C/C++, and 2D image processing in matlab. I don't play video games.

Many thanks!

[David (PassMark)]

Video card performance isn't important for what you want. They'll all do 2D OK.

The Core i5-3210m has slightly better multi-threaded performance and much better single threaded performance.

I would strongly consider paying a bit more however and getting a machine with a SSD.

[ruri]

Thank you so very much for responding to my question promptly! SSD would be the next step. It's a bit beyond my budget at this moment~ :P

I do see many launch their laptops with HDD+SSD. Is that worth buying? Or you could only find difference in turning on/awaking the computer?

[David (PassMark)]

Hybrid drives can help a bit.
They are a halfway house between a HHD and SSD. Sometimes they help, other times they don't.