AMD CPUs surge to 47% user share as Intel continues to slip in Steam survey

[midian182]

What just happened? December's Steam survey results have arrived, and what a month it was for AMD's CPUs. Team Red saw an unusually large increase in user share, taking it to within 8% of Intel. Elsewhere, the most popular GPU changed once again.

Throughout 2025, the only months that AMD's processor share briefly declined were January, February, and August – and it bounced back every time. November's 0.52% increase pushed AMD to a record 45.61%, and December was even better.

Thanks to a massive 4.6% jump during the Christmas period, AMD CPUs have now reached a 47.2% share among survey participants. Intel, meanwhile, is down to 55.4%.

We've long predicted that the Reds would pass the Blues for the first time this year, and it could happen even sooner than expected. With AMD absolutely dominating Amazon's best-selling CPU chart and its 5-year-old Ryzen CPUs proving popular again due to the skyrocketing price of DDR5, the results aren't too surprising.

Moving on to GPUs, 2025's trend of the RTX 3060, RTX 4060, and RTX 4060 Laptop GPU regularly swapping places continued last month. The 4060 mobile chip took the lead in November, only to lose it to the RTX 3060 in December.

Most popular GPUs among Steam survey participants during December

Looking at the month's biggest GPU gains, the RTX 3060 also topped this chart. Interestingly, while the RTX 5000-series took the top five spots in November, the Blackwell card with the biggest gains in December – the RTX 5070 – was down in 15th place.

Last month also saw a large number of AMD cards enter the main GPU chart: the RX 9070 has finally made an appearance, as has the Radeon RX 5500 XT, RX 6950 XT, RX 7900 GRE, and RX 5700. Nvidia's RTX 3080 Laptop GPU and 4090 Laptop GPU were new entries for Team Green.

Best-performing GPUs among Steam survey participants during December

Elsewhere, Windows 11 continues to increase its user share as Windows 10's share declines after reaching its end-of-support date. However, a quarter of survey participants still use Microsoft's older OS.

Despite the memory crisis affecting more of the tech industry, the number of people with 32GB in their PCs increased last month – it's now just 1% behind 16GB as the most common amount. Steam doesn't differentiate between DDR4 and DDR5, though.

Finally, 8GB is the most common VRAM amount among participants (32%), with second-place 12GB at almost half figure (18%).

Permalink to story:

AMD CPUs surge to 47% user share as Intel continues to slip in Steam survey

 

[Axeia]

If only the GPU market was as competitive as the CPU market. Where as CPUs are now close to an equal split, GPUs are far from an equal 3 way split when NVIDIA has over 73 percent of the market and Intel/AMD even when not compensating for Intel and AMD having a large part of their share there due to integrated graphics rather than actual cards.

This might be one of the surveys game developers want to pay attention to, no need to make games aimed at higher specs than what is popular now as the AI gold rush will be preventing people from upgrading. Us poor peasants have been pushed out of the market

 

[SRB]

"Thanks to a massive 4.6% jump during the Christmas period, AMD CPUs have now reached a 47.2% share among survey participants. Intel, meanwhile, is down to 55.4%."

Unless I've missed something, or we're using new math where close is good enough, AMD and Intel have 102.6% of the market. Quite the feat.

 

[yRaz]

If only the GPU market was as competitive as the CPU market. Where as CPUs are now close to an equal split, GPUs are far from an equal 3 way split when NVIDIA has over 73 percent of the market and Intel/AMD even when not compensating for Intel and AMD having a large part of their share there due to integrated graphics rather than actual cards.

This might be one of the surveys game developers want to pay attention to, no need to make games aimed at higher specs than what is popular now as the AI gold rush will be preventing people from upgrading. Us poor peasants have been pushed out of the market

Developers have already been developing games for years with the specs they forcast for the date of release. We're going to see games coming out that noone can play for a few reasons. Hardware simply won't be available, when available it will be priced way above what people are willing to pay and no one knows how to make games on unreal engine 5.

So unless developers feel like paying 10s of millions reworking their entire game to run on hardware people actually have, noone will be able to play games. I have a feeling nVidia might delay the 60 series entirely. We might not see a legitimate new generation of consumer GPUs until 2028 or further. They could theoretically be made, but why make them if no one can afford to buy them? 60 class cards will cost 80 class money.

Entry level GPUs could easily cost $1200-1500 between RAM shortages and TSMC constantly raising prices.

We are about to see a massive stagnation in the hardware market.

 

[PierreJG]

For me it always comes down to price to performance. When I bought my RX6600XT back in November on the second hand market, it was R3800 in my currency. I am not the biggest Nvidia fan but would have liked to play around with DLSS and wanted to buy a RTX3060 (Couldn't care less about raytracing) but the cheapest I could find here was R5200. Here people overcharge Nvidia cards because of DLSS and Raytracing and I just don't see the value in them. Not hating on Nvidia btw as people have a choice on what to buy. CPU on the other hand is a no brain here as AMD are cheaper than Intel and in most task faster.

 

[loki1944]

Intel dominates US government systems. Steam survey is not accounting for that in the least. That is big source of income for intel where amd is practically non existant due to national security concerns.

Overall intel generated 62% MORE revenue than AMD in 2025.

A propper analysis does not focus on only one aspect but the totality.

The Push Toward State-directed Capitalism Undermines Market Competition - AAF

State-directed capitalism risks undermining market competition by allowing government to pick winners, distort incentives, and limit innovation.

www.americanactionforum.org

And this not a new thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/3tkc76/in_the_last_15_years_intel_has_received_enough

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Intel dominates US government systems. Steam survey is not accounting for that in the least. That is big source of income for intel where amd is practically non existant due to national security concerns.

Overall intel generated 62% MORE revenue than AMD in 2025.

Considering intels wider market share is more then twice AMDs, making only 62 percent more is NOT the big win you think it is.

Apropper analysis does not focus on only one aspect but the totality.

A proper analysis of gaming market share cares not what government systems run.

 

[Aus spot]

[QUOTE="SRB, post: 2178056,
Unless I've missed something, or we're using new math where close is good enough, AMD and Intel have 102.6% of the market. Quite the feat.
[/QUOTE]

Yes another example of poor quality checking. Just because the survey said it, does not make ot true or accurate, and the writer missed noting this.

 

[Watzupken]

This is no surprise at all. Intel's Raptor Lake is literally killing itself over time and Arrow Lake performs poorly in games. Given it's been almost 4 years of no good Intel alternatives, most gamers would have moved to AMD. I do think Intel Arrow Lake is good for productivity use and not as bad as most think.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Many if not all of the stats in the survey are broken. Here's a good example but there are many others:

So how long until someone at Steam realizes some intern used AI to make up this imaginary math? Did nobody at all think it just a tiny bit completely wrong that GTX 1650 use would go up by 45% this month?

LOL

 

[loki1944]

Many if not all of the stats in the survey are broken. Here's a good example but there are many others:

So how long until someone at Steam realizes some intern used AI to make up this imaginary math? Did nobody at all think it just a tiny bit completely wrong that GTX 1650 use would go up by 45% this month?

LOL

Awesome. Spot on.

 

[airbornex]

The most underrated stat here is 32GB almost overtaking 16GB. Not because games need it, but because Chrome, Discord, Steam, and Windows have formed an unholy alliance against your RAM.

 

[NumberNine]

That 9800X3D is an absolute beauty.
The perfect balance. It may be my favorite processor of all time.

 

[James321]

We need Intel to make something good again for gamers... They need to ditch that E-core crap we only want performance! Less Wattage, Less Heat and more performance!!!

 

[amghwk]

Intel has been slipping and falling down for the past few years.

Even I, who used to alternate between Intel and AMD, depending on the best processor of the round during the heydays of Intel, now, only upgrading to the next AMD flagships.

Intel stocks are also worrisome.

Maybe Intel will come back, but until then, AMD is doing the home run all the time.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Intel has been slipping and falling down for the past few years.

Even I, who used to alternate between Intel and AMD, depending on the best processor of the round during the heydays of Intel, now, only upgrading to the next AMD flagships.

Intel stocks are also worrisome.

Maybe Intel will come back, but until then, AMD is doing the home run all the time.

“Home run all the time” is pure revisionism. AMD has had great wins recently, but Intel still dominates OEM volume, enterprise deployments, and isn’t exactly collapsing as a company. One bad cycle doesn’t erase decades of market reality...or guarantee AMD keeps winning forever.

Just ask AMD ...

 

[SRB]

“Home run all the time” is pure revisionism. AMD has had great wins recently, but Intel still dominates OEM volume, enterprise deployments, and isn’t exactly collapsing as a company. One bad cycle doesn’t erase decades of market reality...or guarantee AMD keeps winning forever.

Just ask AMD ...

If enterprise and governmnet users are playing games on Steam, and still employed, this would go a long way to explain the push by companies for AI. This was a Steam survey, not a market share study. In addition, this has nothing to do with recent sales either. The point of the Steam survey is to see who is using what when playing games. Considering that this includes not just recent sales, but basically all cpu's available for quite a few years, it just shows that the drop in Intel sales recently has led to more people replacing their older systems with AMD for GAMING. And those gains are real and NOT made up.

As an aside, Intel is also loosing groiund in servers as well at a good clip. The only strongholds Intel has are the corporate/government pc's. Fortunately for them, ii is a good chunk of the PC market, and none of them care if one is 5 frames faster than another.

 

[daffy duck]

"Thanks to a massive 4.6% jump during the Christmas period, AMD CPUs have now reached a 47.2% share among survey participants. Intel, meanwhile, is down to 55.4%."

Unless I've missed something, or we're using new math where close is good enough, AMD and Intel have 102.6% of the market. Quite the feat.

Still a long way behinds Trump's 500-600% price cuts on meds.

 

[Loadedaxe]

If enterprise and governmnet users are playing games on Steam, and still employed, this would go a long way to explain the push by companies for AI. This was a Steam survey, not a market share study. In addition, this has nothing to do with recent sales either. The point of the Steam survey is to see who is using what when playing games. Considering that this includes not just recent sales, but basically all cpu's available for quite a few years, it just shows that the drop in Intel sales recently has led to more people replacing their older systems with AMD for GAMING. And those gains are real and NOT made up.

As an aside, Intel is also loosing groiund in servers as well at a good clip. The only strongholds Intel has are the corporate/government pc's. Fortunately for them, ii is a good chunk of the PC market, and none of them care if one is 5 frames faster than another.

Steam isn’t a market share study, it’s a gamer census. It’s a random, opt in snapshot of Steam users, not a census of all gamers...and not all gamers even use Steam.

Console players, non Steam PC gamers, internet cafes, offline systems, and enterprise machines are completely invisible. That’s literally the point. It overrepresents enthusiasts, DIY builders, and people upgrading for gaming.

AMD’s gaming gains are real...the conclusions you’re drawing from them aren’t.