I'd like to play some games on it like minecraft, civilization 5 and sim city 2013 on medium settings, and web browsing and be an all around good laptop. If there are better ones for the same price then I'd like to know that too but not be too expensive. Also is this laptop worth the money?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314016

You need to check with GPU's mainly, they plays a major role in Gaming Graphics. As the gpu which came with this product may not supported by the Games which you have decided to play.

If you wanna choose go to the gaming site and check for the pc requirements of the game or just google serach like "gpus supported by <name of the game>. If you wanna paly very hard or you are a hardcore gamer you should choose the good hardware and awesome environment for the good experience in gaming. 

Lets say I have played many game but the matter is just playing not experienced good gaming or any thing behind that. because of my experience you need to choose a good hardware requirements and sound engines, extra devices like steering, joystick. If you can afford try for motion gaming. You will be in that role of player.

Will this computer still be relevant in four years?
ie. run most programs and games that are released in two years time:

1) Intel Core i7 2700K Sandy Bridge Desktop processor.
2) Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 Graphics Card.
3) 16 Gb DDR3 RAM
4) 120 gb Intel 520 SSD with 3 TB Hard disk space and Windows 7 home premium installed on SSD.

 

We cant guess that the PC with these specification will support the upcoming softwares in the future. Because my PC configuration is AMD Atholon 64, 512 mb ram, 750 gb harddisk. It lasted for 7 years. I brought in 2005. It's worked fine.

I think you may need to change the Grpahic card, because the upcoming games in the future will be not supported by GPU. You may need to change it, the rendering engine mostly depends on. Processor which you have is highend, which works excellent. Motherboards also plays a main role here. You didnot mentioned the motherboard details. Check for your motherboard specifications as well.

If you are an hardcore gamer, you need to check the Game requirements. Buy GPU after checking the specifications.

I installed new hardware on my pc. I used to have 6gb of ram and intel integrated graphics. I know have a ATI radeon hd 4600 series graphics card and I have a total of 8GB of RAM. my old computer speed according to system information was 3.0 ghz. how can i find my updated speed? I have a intel core i5 btw.

 

Already you have 6 gb of ram and you upgraded to 8 GB of ram, installed 2 gb of ram. There is upgradation in ram not in the processor, so the proccessor spped remians same. If you are using your computer daily you will notice there is some speed in processing applications and improvement in system performance.

RAM's are moduled with mhz speed it depends on the which model your using like SDR, DDR, DDR2 and DDR3, for every model there is change in mhz(speed) of RAM.

DDR3 is the recent release in the market. You can check in details about your system benchmark, hardware..etc using this software.

You can find in details here

Lot of difference is there between quad core and dual core, in the name itself it's telling the difference.

a core has two threads, for processing the data, as itself dual core has 4 threads, and quad core has 8 threads, the difference between these a lot.

the dual core, where it performs or process only two at a time, but compared to quad core it's processor has the capacity to handle 4 process at a time, if need to know the difference in front, make the video editing in these processor based systems, will let you know the difference.

as if you are confused with these while buying a PC, my opinion is go for quad core processor only.