What matters most when you’re choosing between the two
| What you’ll do | CPU that shines | Why it’s better |
|---|---|---|
| Gaming | Intel i3‑1015G1 | Its single‑core turbo climbs to 4.6 GHz, which is the most important number for the kind of one‑thread work that most games need. |
| Light‑to‑mid‑level 1080 p gaming | AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (in the Ryzen 5 3500U) | The Vega GPU runs at 1.7 GHz and has 384 shaders, so it can hit decent frame‑rates on older or less demanding titles at 1080 p. |
| Video editing / rendering / GPU‑accelerated tasks | AMD Ryzen 5 3500U | The Vega GPU can accelerate video encoding/decoding and some 3‑D work. The CPU itself is newer (Zen 2), runs on a 7 nm process, and supports DDR4‑3200 memory, giving you a faster memory bus for those workloads. |
| Multitasking / heavy multitasking | AMD Ryzen 5 3500U | With a newer architecture and a slightly higher base clock (4.1 GHz) it handles many simultaneous threads better than the older 14 nm i3. |
| Stability / data‑integrity needs | AMD Ryzen 5 3500U | It supports ECC memory and can be over‑clocked, which is handy for workstations that need extra reliability. |
| Pure CPU‑only tasks (no GPU work) | Intel i3‑1015G1 | The higher turbo boost (4.6 GHz) gives a small edge on single‑threaded benchmarks, which is why it still feels snappier in office software and in games that rely on the CPU. |
Key differences that affect real‑world use
Bottom line
Pick the one that matches the workload you care about most.