Laptop help | Will this run Minecraft on far?

If you want to run at above 100 FPS and play any game that sucks up more resources than minecraft, 8gb is pretty standard. Plus, it speeds up your laptop considerably for not that much money. Not necessary, but if he can afford it theres no reason to NOT do it.

RAM in no way affects the FPS of the game. It also doesn't speed it up at all as he'll probably have 2 sticks of 2GB Dual channel ram installed.

Let me rephrase this : Running minecraft on normal settings, no, RAM upgrades won't necesasrily help you out. Running games on High or Ultra Settings - Yes, it will hlp minecraft out. Especially if he is running more than one app at a time, or trying to record a video or edit a video. If that does not help smooth out your fps and keep it from randomly dropping, allocate moer through system commands.

No, it wil lnot jump your fps by hundreds unles your computer can already do that since your system wil lrely more on a graphics card and chip than RAM to actually run. Yes, it will help a slight bit, and yes 4 GB is pretty low for a rig you intend to play games on. If you intend to move on from just minecraft to higher games such as BF3, or anything else that will be coming out eventually, 4gb is actually pretty low. For standard gaming and uses, 4gb is fine. 6gb and 8gb are much more versatile and will give your laptop a longer shelf life with the games coming out (and the possible updates to minecraft). It wil lgive you more versatility, more power to run different apps. And it is dirt cheap.

If he can afford it, there is no reason not to.

You seem to have GDDR and DDR mixed up -8GB RAM is only useful if he has an onboard GPU (Which he doesn't) His GPU has 2GB of GDDR3 dedicated to it, in which case 4GB would be plenty - if he had an onboard GPU (Intel 4000 for example - then yes 8GB would be recommended)

MSI has great laptops.

I don't think Alienware is overpriced. I feel I got what I paid for.

From everything I have seen and read about the card, The NVIDIA® GeForce® 610M is an itegrated, on board graphics card that has 2 Gb of DDR3 shared memory, not dedicated. it has 1gb of VRAM on it. Unless you are seeing different information about it than I am.

You wouldn't notice the letdown in performance unless you benchmarked them side by side. It is generally believed in the gaming and tech community that Alienware machines are underpowered compared to other pure, true gaming rigs.

The 610M has 2GB of DDR3 VRAM - Which is another term for GDDR3 - Which is dedicated memory

Alienware are so overpriced and low powered - For £1000 They offer a rig with I7 and a GTX 555 - (I7 and a GTX 555? The heck?) I can personally go out and build that rig with a better GPU (560TI) for £600, you get an alienware if you have idea how to game.

The information I was finding was for laptops with AMD chips (which do not have dedicated memory), not intel They insert the 7000 into the 610 for amd chips. So you are correct. I wasn't getting GDDR3 and DDR3 mixed up, I just saw pages saying that it shared its memory with the motherboard, which would make it DDR3, not GDDR3.

You have to be a hardcore gamer to actually know the difference in the machines. Most people buying Alienwares, especially the laptops, aren't looking for a core rig that will run everything at ultra with no lag. THey think "Oh, pretty! And its expensve, so it must be good!". Like I said, msi is my preferred brand for the buck.