AMD is smashing Intel in retail desktop CPU sales

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: AMD has been on a tear with its Ryzen desktop CPUs for a while now, but fresh sales data from one of Germany’s largest computer hardware retails reveals that Intel is still putting up a fight. And with Alder Lake just around the bend, things are looking even more promising for team blue.

The breakdown comes from Reddit user ingebor, who regularly shares data regarding the desktop CPU market, and details desktop CPU sales from Mindfactory. According to the data, a full 85 percent of processors sold by Mindfactory in May 2021 were from AMD, leaving just 15 percent of the pie for Intel. By July, Intel had closed the gap a bit and captured 24 percent of CPU sales.

The data is meaningful for a few reasons.

First, while it only represents a single retailer, the trends are consistent with what we are seeing at other retailers. Eight of the top 10 best-selling CPUs on Amazon are AMD chips. On Newegg, seven of the top 10 chips are from AMD.

Something else that Intel has going for it is its pending launch of Alder Lake. Chipzilla is expected to unveil high-end Alder Lake chips at an event in October but could save the rest of the lineup for CES 2022 in early January.

Alder Lake will be the company’s first chips to utilize a big.LITTLE architecture and are expected to be compatible with Z690 motherboards. Earlier reports suggest the Z690 chipset will support both DDR4 and DDR5 and could support PCIe 5.0.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/90718-amd-smashing-intel-retail-desktop-cpu-sales.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

AMD has very powerful/ economical CPU.
As for GPU, I’m definitely team Green.

 

[wiyosaya]

I cannot say I am surprised by this.

 

[scavengerspc]

And with Alder Lake just around the bend, things are looking even more promising for team blue.

Could be. But then again, that's what we heard with....... All the previous lakes, and it has just gotten worse.

 

[VitalyT]

And with Alder Lake just around the bend

Do you even know what "around the bend" expression mean? LOL.

If the 11-th gen was any indication how things at Intel are, "Alder Lake" my become their tombstone caption.

Earlier reports suggest the Z690 chipset will support both DDR4 and DDR5 and could support PCIe 5.0

By means of a prayer, I'd wager. There must be an Intel chapel somewhere, to pray for the upcoming hardware support...

 

[punctualturn]

 

[Bawlsdeep]

AMD is doing great in the CPU segment, it's good to see.

Just sucks that their GPU's are not up to par with terrible availablity. They don't want you to buy the higher end cards, mostly 6700 line and 6600 now. 6900XT pretty much nowhere to be seen and 6800 series have low availability too. Ray tracing performance is mediocre too.

AMD never had been able to deliver on both fronts at the same time. So I'm not really surprised.

Will be fun to see what AMD does, now that Intel is not stuck on 14nm anymore and will hit DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 + Hybrid CPU Design before AMD with Windows 11 optimized for Hybrid CPUs to follow.

I expect tables to turn soon, and AMD will be back to being the cheaper option once again.

My Ryzen 3600 in my server has been great tho, will do it's job for years, mostly encoding and running VMs.

Not touching AMD in my gaming rig yet and probably won't. It's simply too wonky overall and lacks emulation optimizations which I need and use often. Use tons of emulators, for Switch, PS3 and other consoles. AMD hardware is simply not good for this.

Maybe in 3-5 years if they keep up, but I don't expect them to. AMD had some good runs time from time, but Intel and Nvidia always came back and slapped them. The new Intel CEO is doing a great job. Bob Swan was a terrible CEO, glad he got booted.

 

[HardReset]

The new Intel CEO is doing a great job. Bob Swan was a terrible CEO, glad he got booted.

Doing = lots of talk, nothing concrete.

 

[Geralt]

Well done, AMD. Chipzilla deserved a good beating.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Not surprising. for most home users, rocket lake is just comet lake with PCIe 4.0 and another 50 watts, with 2 fewer cores then comet lake had. Nothing really interesting or WOWing.

the 5900x is interesting from a prosumer standpoint, the 5800x dominates gaming, and the 5600x would be a great goldilocks chip if it was prices closer to the $150 real world pricing of its true predecessor, the 3600.

I'm guessing the only reason rocket lake is selling at all is the highly competitive price of the locked i5 parts and the availability issues for AMD 5000 series.

 

[Kosmoz]

AMD never had been able to deliver on both fronts at the same time. So I'm not really surprised.

I expect tables to turn soon, and AMD will be back to being the cheaper option once again.

Actually 4 fronts: Consumer CPUs, Server CPUs, APUs (consoles) and GPUs.
I think their are nailing 3 of them now, with the 4th as GPUs coming strong fast, but still with some issues and a tad behind.

I'd say they are having the best David vs Goliath fight ever.

Also tables will not turn soon. After Alder Lake comes, a couple of months later max Zen3+ will come, so Intel won't reign too much if at all. Also Zen4 is supposed to come before the next Intel arch.

At best Intel can hope to beat AMD in 2023. But it's just hope at this point.

I'm guessing the only reason rocket lake is selling at all is the highly competitive price of the locked i5 parts and the availability issues for AMD 5000 series.

The availability issues of Zen3 are almost over now, so these sales are mostly attributed to Intel becoming the budget option with some better prices on select tiers. That's pretty much it.

 

[wiyosaya]

AMD is doing great in the CPU segment, it's good to see.

Just sucks that their GPU's are not up to par with terrible availablity. They don't want you to buy the higher end cards, mostly 6700 line and 6600 now. 6900XT pretty much nowhere to be seen and 6800 series have low availability too. Ray tracing performance is mediocre too.

6900XTs are out there for instance - https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=amd+6900xt However, I would not pay that much.

 

[bexwhitt]

AMD has very powerful/ economical CPU.
As for GPU, I’m definitely team Green.

if you could get one for not silly money

 

[Bulllee]

Why would the working man who switched to AMD and bought a decent board revert to Intel?
The average Joe I'm talking about.

 

[toddincabo]

This article reads really weird. Is this an article about AMD doing good or about some impending comeback by Intel? Make up your mind.

 

[Bulllee]

This article reads really weird. Is this an article about AMD doing good or about some impending comeback by Intel? Make up your mind.

Probably about tomorrow or the days after.
Not today though!

 

[Mr Majestyk]

I'm amazed 15% are buying Intel. They are the equivalent of anti-vaxxers.

Alder lake is now apparently going to use more power than cRocket Lake, so much for 10nm and .little helping out.

 

[zamroni111]

Big.little architecture isn't needed in desktop.
Alder lame will fail

 

[zamroni111]

AMD is doing great in the CPU segment, it's good to see.

Just sucks that their GPU's are not up to par with terrible availablity. They don't want you to buy the higher end cards, mostly 6700 line and 6600 now. 6900XT pretty much nowhere to be seen and 6800 series have low availability too. Ray tracing performance is mediocre too.

AMD never had been able to deliver on both fronts at the same time. So I'm not really surprised.

Will be fun to see what AMD does, now that Intel is not stuck on 14nm anymore and will hit DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 + Hybrid CPU Design before AMD with Windows 11 optimized for Hybrid CPUs to follow.

I expect tables to turn soon, and AMD will be back to being the cheaper option once again.

My Ryzen 3600 in my server has been great tho, will do it's job for years, mostly encoding and running VMs.

Not touching AMD in my gaming rig yet and probably won't. It's simply too wonky overall and lacks emulation optimizations which I need and use often. Use tons of emulators, for Switch, PS3 and other consoles. AMD hardware is simply not good for this.

Maybe in 3-5 years if they keep up, but I don't expect them to. AMD had some good runs time from time, but Intel and Nvidia always came back and slapped them. The new Intel CEO is doing a great job. Bob Swan was a terrible CEO, glad he got booted.

It's because cpu is much more profitable per transistor than gpu.

$799 5950x only needs 11 billion transistors.
$479 6700xt needs 17 billion transistors + 12 GB gddr + fans etc.

 

[Adi6293]

AMD has very powerful/ economical CPU.
As for GPU, I’m definitely team Green.

Sorry what?....

 

[Irata]

The interesting thing here is not the ratio but rather the fact that AMD asp are a good bit higher than Intel asp (€327 vs €238). Until November, these numbers were actually reversed, so there‘s clearly a change of guard regarding budget vs premium. Imo, this is significant.

Not surprising. for most home users, rocket lake is just comet lake with PCIe 4.0 and another 50 watts, with 2 fewer cores then comet lake had. Nothing really interesting or WOWing.

the 5900x is interesting from a prosumer standpoint, the 5800x dominates gaming, and the 5600x would be a great goldilocks chip if it was prices closer to the $150 real world pricing of its true predecessor, the 3600.

I'm guessing the only reason rocket lake is selling at all is the highly competitive price of the locked i5 parts and the availability issues for AMD 5000 series.

In the case of this specific retailer (Mindfactory), availability of Ryzen 5000 CPU has actually been very good for a while and they‘ve been selling them for below MSRP for at least six weeks now. Their Intel prices are also very good.

 

[Bawlsdeep]

I'm amazed 15% are buying Intel. They are the equivalent of anti-vaxxers.

Alder lake is now apparently going to use more power than cRocket Lake, so much for 10nm and .little helping out.

Why are you amazed, Intel had been able to deliver at all times, since they make their own chips. AMD was not, cons of being fabless, and Intel has superior perf/value in the mid-end market because AMD ramped their pricing on 5600x up (and left out non-X model).

Ryzen 1600, 2600 and 3600 series were all cheap. And especially 3600 series had good perf/value. This all changed with 5600X. AMD ramped the price, kept availability low on 5900X and 5950X and pushed the 5600X and 5800X as much as they could (more profit). Perf/value dropped alot as a result, obviously.

You know nothing about Alder Lake yet, only rumours so far. Rumours also claim that an 8 core with HT and 4-8 efficieny cores beat Ryzen 5950X in Cinebench Single and Multi... You believe that too? Or do you cherrypick rumours?

Intel 10nm aka 7 is just as dense and advanced as TSMC 7nm. But TSMC always liked to call their nodes a lower number than they actually are. Same goes for Samsung. And this is why Intel changed method.

7nm TSCM and 8nm Samsung = Intel 10nm / 7

 

[Bawlsdeep]

6900XTs are out there for instance - https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=amd+6900xt However, I would not pay that much.

Yes out there for twice or triple MSRP aka scalper pricing (meaning low availablity, like I said...)

6900XT is going to fall harder in value than a rock thrown off a building if you get one at 1700-2500 dollars. In a year from now, it will be worth less than 500 dollars. RTX 4000 series and RDNA3 incoming in 2022.

AMD already talks about 7900XT for Q4 this year and AMD products don't hold their value well to begin with. Their GPUs take a huge dive in used market compared to Nvidia. Worth nothing, like an Android phone vs iPhone. Almost impossible to sell, unless you sell them for peanuts.

You can find 3080 Ti for less than 6900XT, which the majority of gamers will choose over 6900XT any day.

Going with 6900XT over 6800XT makes no sense anyway, $300 higher MSRP (or $600-900 in reality) for 5% performance? Why...

My RTX 3080 Asus TUF OC is closing in on 1 year by now, bought for 715 dollars on release. I could sell it for double that today if I wanted to.

And I probably will soon, and use my 3070 till 4000 series or RNDA3 hits next year. Lets hope AMD won't do a paper launch next time.

 

[Bawlsdeep]

Actually 4 fronts: Consumer CPUs, Server CPUs, APUs (consoles) and GPUs.
I think their are nailing 3 of them now, with the 4th as GPUs coming strong fast, but still with some issues and a tad behind.

I'd say they are having the best David vs Goliath fight ever.

Also tables will not turn soon. After Alder Lake comes, a couple of months later max Zen3+ will come, so Intel won't reign too much if at all. Also Zen4 is supposed to come before the next Intel arch.

At best Intel can hope to beat AMD in 2023. But it's just hope at this point.

The availability issues of Zen3 are almost over now, so these sales are mostly attributed to Intel becoming the budget option with some better prices on select tiers. That's pretty much it.

They don't dominate enterprise market at all. I just happends to sell server hardware for a living and most companies don't even consider AMD, even tho performance is good. Thats just how it is. Reputation. Intel still have like 90% of enterprise (server) markets and 95% of laptop market. No companies buy desktop CPUs these days, it's server and laptops.

The desktop consumer market is a niche for Intel, but they will reclaim it in the coming years anyway.

The console segment is AMDs for sure, because Intel and Nvidia want no part in this. There is simply not alot of money here. Sony and Microsoft are the winners, not AMD. Those cheap console APUs won't net much profit for AMD and they even cannibalize their CPU and GPU sales because they only have so much room at TSMC 7nm line. AMD needs all the money they can get tho, they need money for R&D going forward and money for paying top dollar to TSMC to use the top-end proces nodes (Apple is king at TSMC).

Intel has way more money than AMD can ever dream of. Thats why Intel secured TSMC 3nm, along with Apple, over AMD. AMD could simply not afford it.

 

[HardReset]

You know nothing about Alder Lake yet, only rumours so far. Rumours also claim that an 8 core with HT and 4-8 efficieny cores beat Ryzen 5950X in Cinebench Single and Multi... You believe that too? Or do you cherrypick rumours?

Cinebench support AVX so that would not be very surprising if it's true.

The console segment is AMDs for sure, because Intel and Nvidia want no part in this. There is simply not alot of money here. Sony and Microsoft are the winners, not AMD. Those cheap console APUs won't net much profit for AMD and they even cannibalize their CPU and GPU sales because they only have so much room at TSMC 7nm line. AMD needs all the money they can get tho, they need money for R&D going forward and money for paying top dollar to TSMC to use the top-end proces nodes (Apple is king at TSMC).

Intel has way more money than AMD can ever dream of. Thats why Intel secured TSMC 3nm, along with Apple, over AMD. AMD could simply not afford it.

AMD dominates console market because Nvidia had big problems with Microsoft and Intel have Nothing to offer there. Basically Microsoft won't do business with Nvidia and since Sony and Microsoft pretty much use same APU for consoles, Nvidia has no chance. Intel could offer chips for free like with XBox but that's bad business, even for Intel.

Intel secured 3nm risk production, AMD uses it when process comes mature. AMD thanks because now TSMC can ramp up 3nm much more aggressively. 5nm process is already 2.5 years old (risk production) and used for 1 year for mass production. Because Apple don't need that much chips, ramp up takes long time. With 3nm Intel helps AMD a lot.