4/8 GB of RAM should be enough, the first for most things, the latter for most games. CPU Intel Core i5 is pretty much the "average" thing that you would be aiming for, and around 2.0 GHz should suit you (again higher GHz if you are playing new HD games and stuff). If you are buying the laptop for the sole reason of gaming, or if you just plan on using it for gaming 80% of the time, you should get yourself a good nvidia graphics card. It's mostly expensive, but it is the best out there for games in my opinion. If you are low on budget, get yourself Intel HD Graphics then, again it's worse but it might suit you for some games. (Bro Tip: Get yourself Intel(r) Graphics HD 5200 or higher, anything before that will be most likely deprecated as the gaming specs increase)
I have Intel Core i5 1.70 GHz, it's not bad at all, but kinda sucks when trying to run the newest games.
Intel HD Graphics 4000, it is not as terrible as it seems, just that some new features (especially the ones used in Dolphin emu) are not available in this GPU. It's cheap tho.
4 GB of RAM, not too chappy, never ran out of memory personally, but running two instances of one game would most likely make you run out of memory.
This was not a gaming laptop, but it suits me for minor games.
