AMD Ryzen CPUs are selling well and posting steady gains as the CPU market looks to recover – but how will Intel respond?
AMD’s Ryzen processors are slowly gaining market share in the CPU world, according to some new figures.
Wccftech reported on the latest desktop processor shipment estimates from analytics firm Mercury Research, with AMD taking over from Intel, albeit modestly.
Mercury stats show that AMD increased its desktop CPU share to 19.8% in the final quarter of 2023 (Q4), up from 19.2% in Q3. That is an increase of 0.6%, and even more over the past year, with a gain of 1.2% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. So there has been a considerable increase in market share over the course of last year for Ryzen chips.
Mind you, most of that movement occurred in the first quarter of 2023 and the fourth quarter, with things remaining relatively flat in the two quarters in between.
AMD’s laptop processors also gained market share, rising to 20.3% in Q4 2023 compared to 19.5% in the previous quarter, so that’s an even bigger shift upwards of 0.8% for mobile silicon.
Wccftech also pointed to new figures on the CPU market from Jon Peddie Research. These didn’t give us a relative split between AMD and Intel, but did show that total CPU shipments rose 7% in Q4 2023 compared to the previous quarter, and a whopping 22% year over year. (Although this also includes mobile chips, so it’s not just a desktop processor metric).
Still, it is of course a healthy sign for the CPU market in general, which seems to be recovering well.
Analysis: Entering Intel territory
This is clearly good news for AMD, although as mentioned, it looks more like steady upward progress than big leaps. But we should not forget that Team Red has not made any major launches in the second half of 2023. (We did get new chips in the first half of the year, most notably X3D models for the Ryzen 7000 family, and a few other vanilla non-X chips for the range).
This means that AMD didn’t gain this momentum through major new releases, it just wiped out Intel’s sales with its existing lineup (mostly).
We witnessed some compelling price cuts towards the end of last year with Ryzen CPUs – including discounts for the Ryzen 7800X3D that’s great for gamers, and Black Friday price cuts for even premium chips like the Ryzen 9 7950X3D – and that’s probably part of the reason for the improved traction in AMD sales.
Perhaps the arrival of Intel’s Raptor Lake Refresh, and some disappointment over the fact that much of that lineup is quite pedestrian (with one notable exception), may have also caused some buyers to turn to AMD as well.
Either way, AMD will clearly look to build on this momentum in desktops in 2024, and with Zen 5 CPUs (Ryzen 8000 or 9000 models) hitting the market later this year, Intel should be able to counter this threat take seriously.
We’re not sure when Intel’s next-generation rival desktop chips, Arrow Lake, will arrive, but Team Blue really needs to make sure they’re not far behind Zen 5. Currently, the rumor mill believes AMD will be the first to market comes – the danger for Intel is that if Arrow Lake arrives late in 2024, it gives AMD a clear opportunity to push that silicon further. Both next-gen series are highly anticipated and are likely to gain positions in our rankings of the best processors.
If Intel can’t bring Arrow Lake to market in a timely enough manner compared to the Zen 5 release timeframe, Team Blue may have to look at price cuts on existing CPUs to better compete – and not lose even more desktop territory.