I5-8250u vs Ryzen 5 2500u for light gaming

[My Pet Russian]

My SOs was sent back recently for a refund after a fault developed, so she's now in the market for a new laptop. I'm normally the tech one but I have no idea when it comes to laptops.

We are looking at two of the same brand of laptop which are the same (£500, 8GB DDR4, 1TB HDD) except for the CPU and GPU. So I'm looking for advice on which is better.

The programs she is looking to run are Sims 4 with all the expansions and the Life is Strange series. She's not looking for 1080p, Ultra, 60FPS, but decently playable and wants to know which is better. Can anyone shed some light on which is better?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Chaos2Theory]

Ryzen generally comes with a lot more graphics power, and intel with more battery life. Both will be easily able to play the sims 4 though, although for the price range of an i5/ryzen 5 computer you should really look into one with an ssd.

Life, especailly laptop life, is infinintly better with one, even if its a small 120gb one.

An i5 will feel like a pentium without one.

 

[why_wolf]

The Intel will perform better on strictly CPU related tasks (though since this is the laptop variant it won't be that big of a difference) than the AMD. However the AMD iGPU is hands down better than the Intel iGPU. If there isn't an extra GPU involved in this equation the AMD would be a better buy for the intended use case.

 

[My Pet Russian]

Thank you both, I felt like that would be the answer. I think she'll go for the AMD then. I do wish we could get her an SSD but that bumps the price up far too much, about £100.

 

[Chaos2Theory]

You can grab a nice one on amazon for around 20-25 bucks if you feel like swapping it yourself! But that makes sense, enjoy the new laptop!