Processor market heats up as AMD makes record share gain

AMD launched its Ryzen processors earlier this year to great acclaim and it would appear that’s being reflected in sales as the company made its largest quarterly share gain in history.

According to benchmarking experts PassMark, AMD gained 10.4 per cent in the second quarter, taking it to 31 per cent of the market – up from its 20.6 per cent market share in the previous quarter. By contrast. Intel saw its market share drop to a still very impressive 69 per cent to show that we most certainly are in a two-horse race.

However, these figures should be taken with a pinch of salt as they only come from consumers who have used PassMark’s benchmarking utility. Those are limited to Windows PCs, and, in particular, power users who are likely to be benchmarking their system. Average consumers aren’t likely to be running these kinds of intensive benchmarking tests. 

While these figure are by no means conclusive, it is a definite indicator that there has been a shift in the CPU market (even if these early signs show that it might just be among power users). From both the public and critical reception of Ryzen, it is clear that momentum is with AMD and that the processor market is growing more competitive.

As Tech Radar points out, you have to look back to 2007 in order to find AMD’s share of the market at over 30 per cent. 2005 was the last time that the company was close to having a 50-50 split with Intel.