AMD continues to chip away at rival Intel's lead in desktop processor market share, with a not-insignificant 5.7% leap in the third quarter of 2024, according to the latest auditing figures by Mercury Research. And compared to a year ago, AMD saw its share of the desktop CPU space increase by nearly 10%, falling less than half a percentage point short of double-digit growth.
What's especially notable about the huge upticks sequentially and especially year-over-year is that none of it takes into account the newly launched and much-anticipated
Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, which is now the gaming CPU to beat. It's the first and so far the only Ryzen 9000 series chip to utilize AMD's second generation 3D V-Cache, and it's such a popular part in the early going that
retailers sold out of whatever inventories they were allotted.
It will be interesting to see how the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and, eventually, more Ryzen 9000X3D processors affect the desktop market share breakdown in the quarters ahead. Likewise, Intel's VP and GM, Client AI & Technical Marketing, Robert Hallock, told us in a recent podcast that Intel plans on rolling out fixes for the company's Arrow Lake chips that will deliver
major performance gains, so that's another thing to keep an eye on.
As it stands, the figures show AMD managed to increase its share of the desktop CPU market (excluding IoT) to more than a quarter at 28.7%, versus 23% in the previous quarter and 19.2% a year ago. It still has a long way to go in order to catch up with Intel, which saw its share decrease to 71.3%, compared to 77% in the second quarter and 80.8% a year ago.
The numbers do come with a caveat, however.
"Due to inventory being used by OEMs, on a PC systems sell-out basis Intel's share is no doubt higher than shown for CPUs this quarter," noted Dean McCarron, President of Mercury Research.
According to McCarron, there's a real shot that the share breakdown on the desktop swings back in Intel's favor (in terms of movement) as Intel's inventory correction subsides. We'll have to see how that plays out, though after contending with
stability issues on Raptor Lake and now performance anomalies on Arrow Lake, it's not hard to fathom that AMD is benefiting from Intel's ongoing challenges.
When looking at the overall x86 picture, there was not a whole lot of movement in the third quarter—just around half a percentage point, with AMD settling in at 25% and Intel retaining a commanding lead at 75%. The slight movement did work in AMD's favor, though compared to last year, Intel increased its share by 5.6%.
The overall snapshot includes all x86 processors, including PC client, servers, IoT, and semi-custom products. From McCarron's vantage point, Intel's lower client growth, particular in desktop, held it back. Meanwhile, the impact of AMD's SoC business isn't weighing on AMD by the same extent it had been.
"While AMD's SoC business has
been a drag on its sequential all-inclusive share results for
several quarters, the size of the declines on a percentage basis is
getting much smaller and less impactful on overall results, so AMD's
gains in desktop and mobile aren't being reduced by SoC headwinds
as much as in prior quarters," McCarron noted.
That's an interesting nugget, given that it's late in the cycle of modern generation game consoles (Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5) powered by semi-custom hardware from AMD. Mercury Research didn't provide numbers for solely SoCs, but if it did, we imagine they would show a precipitous drop compared to last year.
In case you're wondering,
Mercury Research's latest data also shows around the same split in the server space, with Intel out in front at 75.8% (down 0.1% sequentially and down 0.9% year-over-year) and AMD at 24.2%.