I suppose you're talking about desktop PCs.
The situation is totally different with Notebooks since mobile processors don't have much to do right now with desktop cpus.
In laptops AMD processors suck unfortunately. They drain a lot of energy while being less efficient.
Core 2 duo is the best for laptops right now. Pentium Dual Core is way inferior, even if it had way more mhz, the cpu architecture is just way more limited.
Then let's go to the GPU - graphical memory doesn't matter that much for laptops since most mobile graphic chips are limited elsewhere.
Right now ATI graphics cards seem to be the best for laptops. Nvidia 9000 series are just recycled 8000 series under new names. most 8000series cards stole memory from Ram, with 9000 they avoid saying that they drain your memory by saying that they support up to xxx mb of ram.
In reality in best case the card will steal some memory from ram while having some of it's own memory (usually a little amount of it).
Since you don't play the newest games on high resolutions on laptops 256mb would be really enough. I had a good 256mb graphics even on my pc and it was quite good for hd gaming on older games, I replaced it with a 512mb one but in lower resolutions visual memory doesn't make any difference, especially in older games with smaller textures.
However it's a bit complicated with notebook graphics since the fastest one with 1gb of memory in a 2000$ notebook still won't be as good as an average modern desktop PC gpu with 512mb memory for 100$ or so. So that's why they say that laptops are not good for gaming. Games that really need 512mb of graphic memory will be too demanding to run properly because the mobile graphics chip is just too slow. However considering that the resolution of your screen will be quite huge for a laptop you might do better by looking for a 512mb *just in case*. 256mb graphics is not bad though and in most cases you won't feel a difference because of lacking memory in this class of graphic chips.
If you're talking about average games like Doom 3 most modern laptops will be good enough and actually you won't see a big difference between them.
To show it in some better perspective:
Here's a benchmark of 9300M:
Notebookcheck: NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS
In short it's better to have 512mb rather than 256mb but the difference will only be visible in higher resolutions/ newest games with big textures.
It's better to have a faster 256mb graphic card than a bit slower 512mb.
If you're looking for a full featured laptop with Blu-ray etc. this Acer is a good solution in this price since it doesn't really have any competition.
If you'd ask me for the best 600 euro laptop from that site considering you don't need blu-ray I'd pick this:
ASUS K70IO-TY014C Laptop K70IO-TY014C - Laptops Direct
That's if you don't care about the size and portability - a typical "gaming" laptop with a great graphics card with 1gb of it's own memory and a 17inch, high resolution screen.
If you don't care about laptop's size the 17 inch screen should be a really great thing for you for gaming and AutoCAD.
Except for the lack of blu-ray it's better with everything - better company (so I assume better quality and service), faster cpu, bigger hdd, more and faster ram (2x2gb in dual channel) and despite of it being bigger it's weight is lower. Oh and most of all the graphics card is about 300% more efficient than that in Acer.
here you can see how efficient that gpu is:
Notebookcheck: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M
The situation is totally different with Notebooks since mobile processors don't have much to do right now with desktop cpus.
In laptops AMD processors suck unfortunately. They drain a lot of energy while being less efficient.
Core 2 duo is the best for laptops right now. Pentium Dual Core is way inferior, even if it had way more mhz, the cpu architecture is just way more limited.
Then let's go to the GPU - graphical memory doesn't matter that much for laptops since most mobile graphic chips are limited elsewhere.
Right now ATI graphics cards seem to be the best for laptops. Nvidia 9000 series are just recycled 8000 series under new names. most 8000series cards stole memory from Ram, with 9000 they avoid saying that they drain your memory by saying that they support up to xxx mb of ram.
In reality in best case the card will steal some memory from ram while having some of it's own memory (usually a little amount of it).
Since you don't play the newest games on high resolutions on laptops 256mb would be really enough. I had a good 256mb graphics even on my pc and it was quite good for hd gaming on older games, I replaced it with a 512mb one but in lower resolutions visual memory doesn't make any difference, especially in older games with smaller textures.
However it's a bit complicated with notebook graphics since the fastest one with 1gb of memory in a 2000$ notebook still won't be as good as an average modern desktop PC gpu with 512mb memory for 100$ or so. So that's why they say that laptops are not good for gaming. Games that really need 512mb of graphic memory will be too demanding to run properly because the mobile graphics chip is just too slow. However considering that the resolution of your screen will be quite huge for a laptop you might do better by looking for a 512mb *just in case*. 256mb graphics is not bad though and in most cases you won't feel a difference because of lacking memory in this class of graphic chips.
If you're talking about average games like Doom 3 most modern laptops will be good enough and actually you won't see a big difference between them.
To show it in some better perspective:
Here's a benchmark of 9300M:
Notebookcheck: NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS
In short it's better to have 512mb rather than 256mb but the difference will only be visible in higher resolutions/ newest games with big textures.
It's better to have a faster 256mb graphic card than a bit slower 512mb.
If you're looking for a full featured laptop with Blu-ray etc. this Acer is a good solution in this price since it doesn't really have any competition.
If you'd ask me for the best 600 euro laptop from that site considering you don't need blu-ray I'd pick this:
ASUS K70IO-TY014C Laptop K70IO-TY014C - Laptops Direct
That's if you don't care about the size and portability - a typical "gaming" laptop with a great graphics card with 1gb of it's own memory and a 17inch, high resolution screen.
If you don't care about laptop's size the 17 inch screen should be a really great thing for you for gaming and AutoCAD.
Except for the lack of blu-ray it's better with everything - better company (so I assume better quality and service), faster cpu, bigger hdd, more and faster ram (2x2gb in dual channel) and despite of it being bigger it's weight is lower. Oh and most of all the graphics card is about 300% more efficient than that in Acer.
here you can see how efficient that gpu is:
Notebookcheck: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M
