How good is an AMD A8 Quad-Core processor

[NotTooBadwithHardware]

I've been looking for a new laptop to get this Christmas with a certain range of reasonable specs within my price range (~400) and I was originally looking for a laptop with an i5-4210 processor but instead I've been finding a lot of AMD A8 Quad-Core processors clocked at about 1.7-1.9 GHz. But I was wondering if this processor would be able to tackle things like 3D animation (which is my usual hobby), video editing, and light-medium gaming (minecraft in particular), just not all at the same time of course.
Other specs on the laptops that I've considered along with the AMD A8:
At least 4GB RAM, 500 to 750 GB Storage, and AMD Radeon graphics.
(Most that I have found have a 15.6" display, some with a touchscreen running windows 8.1 but I'm not sure if that affects performance speed of the computer)

 

[Math Geek]

for your price range, the a8 or a10 are what you will find (as is your experience already). they are plenty capable and should run your programs fine. you're not going to blaze through any rendering with it but it will get the job done. the built in graphice are pretty good for the a8 and it will play minecraft no problems. the only thing i would recommend is to look at 8 gb of ram instead of 4. the gpu uses shared graphics so your 4 gb is probably less than 3 once this is factored in. 8 gb will allow you to give 1-2 gb of ram to the gpu and still have plenty to work with for the system.