According to a report provided by Mercury Research, AMD has made some seriously impressive gains in the desktop CPU market over the previous year. The report shows AMD currently enjoying a 32.2% market share, up from 23% in the same quarter last year.
That boots Intel down from its previous 77% share to 67.8%, a remarkable downturn in just a single year's worth of operations. According to the report:
"Recall that last quarter AMD had a substantial share gain as the desktop PC gaming market switched en masse to AMD's new Granite Ridge processors, especially the X3D versions, and this trend continued in the second quarter results, resulting in strong unit growth for AMD desktop CPUs.
"Combined with Intel seeing a decline in shipments, AMD's share saw a large sequential share increase, and on year, the share gain was nearing 10 percent."
Intel's poorly received Arrow Lake chips are likely to blame for such a significant drop, amid a year of internal strife, foundry issues, and poor performance for Intel overall. Intel's previous CEO, Pat Gelsinger, retired late last year after disappointing financial results, and the company appears to be struggling to right itself in the face of political pressure from the US government regarding its new CEO and perceived performance, although such criticism appears to have been rescinded recently.
AMD doesn't have it all its own way, however. The needle doesn't appear to have moved all that much in regard to its client market share, while the mobile CPU market remains a tough nut to crack for the company. Despite high-profile laptop manufacturers like Razer switching over to its Strix Point chips to great effect, Intel is still said to hold a massive 79.7% of the market share, likely due to pre-existing arrangements with laptop manufacturers to use its mobile CPUs in their new offerings.
AMD appears to have made a small dent, but year on year, this accounts for a 0.3% increase in mobile CPU share, which is unlikely to cause Intel too much worry in the near future. One could argue, however, that it's got plenty of those worries on its plate already.
AMD's current desktop CPU offerings are certainly performant and occupy five out of six spots in our best CPU for gaming guide. However, while its mobile CPUs are arguably equally impressive, it appears AMD may need to convince more laptop manufacturers to switch to its mobile CPUs in order to make headway in such an Intel-dominated segment.
Regardless, AMD seems to be having its moment in the sun in regards to desktop CPUs right now, as confirmed by its own impressive financial reports, although there's still plenty of work to do in other segments. Its recent GPU offerings, for example, have been very well-received and appear to be selling strongly, but the Nvidia behemoth continues to trundle ever onwards, and there's plenty of catching up to do in the AI GPU market. Still, a win's a win, if you ask me.
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AMD Ryzen 7 8700G
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