AMD Achieves 40% CPU Market Share For The First Time In Steam Gaming Survey
It took some time, but AMD managed to breach a 40% adoption rate on Steam for the first time ever, according to Valve's latest Steam survey results. It's not inconceivable that AMD could match or even overtake Intel in Steam usage by this time next year, though caveats abound, including the very nature of these monthly hardware and software surveys.
One thing that is important to keep in mind is these surveys are opt-in and by invitation, rather than being an all-inclusive representation of the entire Steam army. This can and sometimes does shift results, particularly when/if the results are heavily skewed to internet cafes in China.
Still, it remains one of the best resources for analyzing the gaming segment, in terms of hardware and software trends. And in this case, we can see an consistent upward trend in the adoption of AMD processors. The latest survey results show AMD sitting at a 40.39% share of users pinged for the month of July, versus 59.52% for Intel.
At the end of June, the split sat at 39.65% (AMD) and 60.27% (Intel). If going back to March (the furthest back the survey shows without looking hitting up the Wayback Machine), AMD accounted for 37.62% of users surveyed, versus 67.3% for Intel.
Taken at face value, we're looking at a 2.77% increase for AMD in the span of a few months. Caveats about Steam's survey data notwithstanding, it's not hard to believe that AMD would make steady gains and cross the 40% threshold.
For one, AMD is the only one churning consumer processors with stacked 3D V-Cache, which primarily (and almost exclusively) benefit gaming. If you're building a gaming PC, there's a good chance you've at least considered a 3D V-Cache chip.
Secondly, the steady ascension on Steam is in line with trends on Amazon, which maintains a fluid list of the best-selling processors. Looking at the current list, AMD Ryzen processors account for nine out of 10 of the top-selling chips, with Intel's Core i7-12700KF sliding into the top 10 (at number 10). If extending the ranking to the top 20 best-selling CPUs on Amazon, Intel accounts for just three chips.
Notable, the top two processor are both X3D chips—Ryzen 7 9800X3D (No. 1) and Ryzen 7 7800X3D (No. 2). The Ryzen 9 9950X3D sits in the seventh spot, bringing the tally of X3D processors to three of the top 10.
It will be interesting to see if Intel can stop the bleeding on Steam, so to speak. It depends on how successful Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan ends up being in his effort to make the company a more agile firm with a more disciplined foundry.
Additionally, it's worth noting that Intel may finally have a response to AMD's X3D chips with its upcoming Nova Lake launch. Nova Lake is rumored to adopt bLLC, or Big (or Base) Last Level Cache, for at least two SKUs. These chips would effectively have extra on-package SRAM in the base tile, to function similarly to AMD's 3D V-Cache.
In any event, Steam's new survey results should serve as another eye-opener for Intel.
