AMD Captures 28.7% Desktop Market Share in Q3 2024, Intel Maintains Lead

[AleksandarK]

According to the market research firm Mercury Research, the desktop CPU market has witnessed a remarkable transformation, with AMD seizing a substantial 28.7% market share in Q3 of 2024—a giant leap since the launch of the original Zen architecture in 2017. This 5.7 percentage point surge from the previous quarter is a testament to the company's continuous innovation against the long-standing industry leader, Intel. Their year-over-year growth of nearly ten percentage points, fueled by the success of their Ryzen 7000 and 9000 series processors, starkly contrasts Intel's Raptor Lake processors, which encountered technical hurdles like stability issues. AMD's revenue share soared by 8.5 percentage points, indicating robust performance in premium processor segments. Intel, witnessing a decline in its desktop market share to 71.3%, attributes this shift to inventory adjustments rather than competitive pressure and still holds the majority.

AMD's success story extends beyond desktops, with the company claiming 22.3% of the laptop processor market and 24.2% of the server segment. A significant milestone was reached as AMD's data center division generated $3.549 billion in quarterly revenue, a new record for a company not even present in the data center in any considerable quantity just a decade ago. Stemming from strong EPYC processor sales to hyperscalers and cloud providers, along with Instinct MI300X for AI applications, AMD's acceleration of data center deployments is massive. Despite these shifts, Intel continues to hold its dominant position in client computing, with 76.1% of the overall PC market, held by its strong corporate relationships and extensive manufacturing infrastructure. OEM partners like Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others rely heavily on Intel for their CPU choice, equipping institutions like schools, universities, and government agencies.



Below, you can see more charts of AMD's mobile and server advancement.


View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Vya Domus]

It's pretty crazy how Intel went from a complete monopoly in every market segment to this, they could have easily squandered AMD's efforts if they became competitive in pricing but they refused to do so. I don't think people realize how big of a fuck up this is, especially in the server space, to lose 25% of that market is crazy, businesses are very risk averse and are difficult to convince to move away from the safe choice.

 

[Quicks]

Good, maybe Intel can start by making better more affordable products now.

 

[mb194dc]

Both teams have decent product stacks, in the average real world use cases there's actually going to be little difference between them. People get way too excited and hyped now for fringe performance gains. Sure you can save seconds in application performance, unless you do really intensive stuff constantly it's not going to change your work day. It's only really the edge use cases that it makes a difference, people doing loads of very intensive cpu tasks or gaming at low res like 1080p with high end GPUs.

Servers are where CPU gains can really show, but datacenters upgrades move slowly and reliability more important than speed.

 

[R0H1T]

but datacenters upgrades move slowly and reliability more important than speed.

Yes & no, more $$$ saved on cooling/power directly shores up your bottom line, & this is why the likes of Google, AWS, MS, Apple, and Meta have gone to their custom silicon in a big way!

The so-called hyperscalers are the biggest customers for x86 & also their biggest competition.

 

[Daven]

This market research is becoming more and more irrelevant without taking into consideration ARM processors (Apple, Qualcomm, Mediatek, Nvidia, Ampere, Amazon, Google, etc) and new form factors (tablets, smartphones, handhelds, smart devices, etc) that have replaced laptops and desktops as client’s primary computing devices in some cases.

Even if you combine AMD and Intel revenue together, it’s just a fraction of revenue of ARM and GPU compute. Market research helps one invest and this report is not going to help with that. It will only tell you who is ahead between two players out of dozens.

 

[AGlezB]

Intel's biggest competitor isn't AMD but ARM. The x86 slice of the pie is getting smaller by the minute because ARM is eating increasinly bigger chunks of the market and both Intel and AMD are threatened by it, which is why they created the advisory board.

What the Intel-AMD x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group is, and What it's Not

AVX-512 was proposed by Intel more than a decade ago—in 2013 to be precise. A decade later, the implementation of this instruction set on CPU cores remains wildly spotty—Intel implemented it first on an HPC accelerator, then its Xeon server processors, then its client processors, before...

www.techpowerup.com

Frankly, I don't see a way for them to save x86 because the instruction set is too bloated. The way I see it they'll keep kicking and screaming for a few decades more because there is a lot of software that will not run on ARM but in the end they're going to follow mainframes into oblivion.

EDIT @Daven beat me to the argument.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

If AMD could lease more capacity from TSMC and produce more consumer ZEN 5 CPUs with 3D V-cache, it would easily catch up and even surpass Intel in this market.

 

[ZoneDymo]

really is a long game

 

[Daven]

If AMD could lease more capacity from TSMC and produce more consumer ZEN 5 CPUs with 3D V-cache, it would easily catch up and even surpass Intel in this market.

The flat lining of AMD in the server space could be due to limited access to fab capacity. But AMD is going up in laptop and desktop markets against Intel so they are making enough to grow.

 

[Hyderz]

AMD will continue to grow looks they are secured for gpu department too for ps5 pro, ps6 and next xbox and continue what they do in the cpu department. As for dedicated gpu… this one needs the most work.. they not only need a gpu to go toe to toe but need a gpu to outmatch nvidia’s offering but that is a tall order for few generations to come..

 

[mtosev]

Congratulations to AMD. Intel needs to make better CPUs.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

I find it funny when people express fears over "AMD is the new intel" and claiming that they've become complacent.....Intel still has 70% of the desktop market, the majority of the enterprise market, the majority of laptop models are still Intel, Intel still gets a larger number of high end motherboard offerings, etc.

I guarantee you that if you walked into a Bestbuy and surveyed customers at random, at least half of them wouldn't even know who AMD is....and if you doubt that, consider several of my coworkers who have recently asked for advice buying laptops. Only one out of the three even knows who AMD is and they said "isn't that a second rate budget offering"? Indicated that his perception of AMD is based in 2015.

All I'm saying is that there is still a long ways to go before AMD is in a place where it can be "complacent".

 

[Daven]

I find it funny when people express fears over "AMD is the new intel" and claiming that they've become complacent.....Intel still has 70% of the desktop market, the majority of the enterprise market, the majority of laptop models are still Intel, Intel still gets a larger number of high end motherboard offerings, etc.

I guarantee you that if you walked into a Bestbuy and surveyed customers at random, at least half of them wouldn't even know who AMD is....and if you doubt that, consider several of my coworkers who have recently asked for advice buying laptops. Only one out of the three even knows who AMD is and they said "isn't that a second rate budget offering"? Indicated that his perception of AMD is based in 2015.

All I'm saying is that there is still a long ways to go before AMD is in a place where it can be "complacent".

It’s the bubble mentality of TPU readers. In the rest of the world, AMD has a lot of work ahead of them and as far as I can tell, they continue to move full steam ahead.

 

[R0H1T]

It's not necessarily about AMD being complacent, just that ARM (ecosystem) is in a much more advantageous position right now, in large parts because of the x86 duopoly!

I find it funny when people express fears over "AMD is the new intel" and claiming that they've become complacent.....Intel still has 70% of the desktop market, the majority of the enterprise market, the majority of laptop models are still Intel, Intel still gets a larger number of high end motherboard offerings, etc.

And there's absolutely nothing that compares to the money available in the server space! Now that the hyperscalers have figured out where they can save/make more money, it's a massive uphill battle for the incumbents ~

Google Axion CPU With GCE C4A vs. AWS Graviton4 Performance Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

This makes two of the biggest customers go with their own hardware, even if in limited capacity for now!

 

[Vayra86]

It's pretty crazy how Intel went from a complete monopoly in every market segment to this, they could have easily squandered AMD's efforts if they became competitive in pricing but they refused to do so. I don't think people realize how big of a fuck up this is, especially in the server space, to lose 25% of that market is crazy, businesses are very risk averse and are difficult to convince to move away from the safe choice.

It didnt happen overnight, but their reluctance to really start from scratch has done them in.

AMD had a clean slate, Intel had a dirty whiteboard in 2017. And they never tossed that board out, they kept wiping it down but as always, some crap is left behind until you just cant read things proper eventually.

AMD figured out their current whiteboard didnt quite fit all the things anymore and just added more of them. Intel finally arrived there too now, except they still have their old whiteboard in the middle with a bunch of PostIt notes stuck on all sides of it, and calls it new.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

What is really amazing and sad that after all that AMD has done and released, the market share is so low.

But then again, until Dell stop protecting dear intel in the form of exclusive intel only offerings in their Latitude and Optiplex line, AMD doesn’t have a chance.

Then again, those sweet intel bribes do help Dell's bottom line.

 

[Dawora]

If AMD could lease more capacity from TSMC and produce more consumer ZEN 5 CPUs with 3D V-cache, it would easily catch up and even surpass Intel in this market.

No it cant, this is very silly thinking..

Marketshare % is MUCH more than Gaming CPUs only.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

No it cant, this is very silly thinking..

Marketshare % is MUCH more than Gaming CPUs only.

lol for office tasks a dual core 4 thread alder lake series celeron is perfectly sufficient and very cheap. AMD really hasn't released anything in this ultra-budget segment of the market for a long time. I guess the last ones were some sort of Athlon 3000 series?

 

[eidairaman1]

It’s the bubble mentality of TPU readers. In the rest of the world, AMD has a lot of work ahead of them and as far as I can tell, they continue to move full steam ahead.

Hence their Logo

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

It's been an interesting battle. x86 has long been capable of being powerful, with Intel and AMD scaling designs down for better low-power results. Arm has long been low-power capable, and has been scaled-up for more performance. We're finally starting to meet in the middle here on power and efficiency, and emulation is finally becoming viable. Apple was able to make the jump in 2020, but they don't operate at the scale of Windows. Snapdragon X might not gain a ton of market share, but it shows what can be done now. I wonder if/when we'll see AMD make an Arm solution. They did years ago, but the concept was too early since WOA was not ready.

 

[v12dock]

I've stopped buying Intel at work. Countless problems with their Wi-Fi chipset with my Cisco APs.

 

[Frick]

lol for office tasks a dual core 4 thread alder lake series celeron is perfectly sufficient and very cheap. AMD really hasn't released anything in this ultra-budget segment of the market for a long time. I guess the last ones were some sort of Athlon 3000 series?

Aren't those places mostly buying i3's maybe i5's? This is based on the kind of office desktops I've seen in my life; I don't think I've seen a single Celeron (and later Pentium) ever. That said I also think Lenovo is the only one currently offering AMD systems.

 

[kiniku]

I just picked up an Intel 14900K for $438.00 with the final firmware that ended the instabilities. I don't game at 1080P with a RTX 4090 GPU. I also run apps that perform much better with multiple cores. Bliss.

 

[3valatzy]

Since the Athlon XP and Athlon 64 times, AMD has the better products.
Unfortunately, the market is so corrupt, and they prefer shenanigans than actual product quality.
Today, there is simply no competition between Ryzen and Core-something-meaningless. The Ryzen is the superior product.

Adored explains it pretty well: