Looking to upgrade to new laptop

[Arkaign]

Well, I may sound a bit harsh on the AMD APUs, but for value gaming they're really not bad. Your A10 is the best of the series so far.

Gaming on PC will be bottlenecked by something or other any way you cut it, even on really beefy rigs, but they are more often bottlenecked by GPU.

Now comparing midrange Intel vs. AMD CPUs, you have most often a situation where the AMD CPU portion is mediocre, and the GPU portion is mediocre (in terms of gaming). Whereas on Intel setups without a dedicated GPU you have an excellent CPU portion, and below-average/poor GPU portion (Intel HD Graphics, even the HD4600, just aren't very good for gaming).

So if you showed me a laptop with an AMD A6, A8, or A10 APU, and compared it to a similarly priced value Intel laptop with an i3 or i5, but without a dedicated GPU to go with it, the AMD will be better for gaming. Now add a decent GPU to the situation and the Intel turns into a much better unit.

TLDR : For $400, you did just fine. It's really really difficult to find a well rounded gaming laptop for under $600, and you can get into trouble really quick if you start trying to checkbox all the good stuff like :

i7 Quad
8GB or more ram
7200RPM HDD or even an SSD
Dedicated GPU of decent spec (eg; GT750 or better)
1080P Screen
etc.

As for how to set your particular unit up for best results with that A10 you have, would be to run native resolution, high textures, medium shadows, low AA.