In brief: AMD dominated socketed CPU sales on Amazon's US site in March, and the picture doesn't seem to have changed a few months later. Intel's new Core Ultra 200 series chips struggled to climb the retailer's rankings back then and have since almost completely disappeared.
Intel CPUs have been completely shut out of Amazon's top 10 best sellers as of late June. While AMD's Zen 3, 4, and 5 chips occupy most of the top 50 spots, Team Blue's latest lineup remains under the shadow of its predecessors.
The most popular Intel CPU is the Raptor Lake flagship Core i9-14900K, ranked 12th. Its newer Arrow Lake equivalent, the Core Ultra 9 285K, lags behind in 32nd place, and our face-off from December explains why: it's 5% slower in gaming on average and can sometimes fall behind by over 20%.
The only other Arrow Lake processors in the top 100, the Core Ultra 7 265K and 265KF, rank 23rd and 25th, respectively. Intel customers appear to prefer Raptor Lake and even older Alder Lake chips such as the Core i7-12700K. The $108 Core i5-12400F, our top choice for budget-conscious new builds, also remains a popular CPU.
Meanwhile, Team Red's Ryzen 7 9800X3D, our current favorite gaming CPU overall, has fallen from the top spot since March but maintains second place behind its predecessor, the 7800X3D. Other Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 chips from the company's last three generations occupy the rest of the top 10 list, with the 5700X3D being the only other 3D V-Cache CPU. The 9800X3D is so popular that it caused 8-core CPUs to finally overtake 6-core processors in recent CPU-Z telemetry reports.
Also read: The Best Value Gaming CPUs
The stark difference between Zen 5 and Arrow Lake has persisted all year. In January, AMD blamed "horrible" Intel CPUs for shortages of the 9800X3D. Later that month, Intel promised that incoming patches would boost Core Ultra 200 gaming performance by up to 26%, but they had no effect. Recent benchmarks also revealed that high-end SSDs suffer performance deficiencies when paired with Arrow Lake processors.
In early April, TechEpiphany reported that 78 percent of socketed CPUs sold on Amazon in the US in March were Ryzen, with the 9800X3D selling over 6,000 units and AMD quintupling Intel's revenue. The following month, Intel Arrow Lake's market share fell below 2% while Team Red's 3D V-Cache chips nearly reached 30%.
Although data from CPU-Z and Steam surveys shows that Intel processors are still installed in more PCs overall, Team Red is closing the gap.