AMD’s 3rd Gen Ryzen 3000 processors are the most popular consumer CPUs to hit the market in the last decade or so and most of the global markets are seeing a steady rise in team red’s CPU share. The bulk of it, however, seems to be going to Europe. According to a report from The Register, 12% of the 5 million personal computers sold in Europe were AMD powered, up by 7% YoY. This means that in just one year AMD’s desktop sales rose from 355K to 629K, a 200% increase!
Overall, 18% of consumer-oriented PCs were powered by AMD, up by 7% YoY while 8% of workstation PCs had the AMD logo on them (up from 5% YoY). The reasons for this unprecedented rise are twofold. Firstly, the newly announced Ryzen 3000 processors are wreaking havoc to Intel’s 9th Gen Coffee Lake offerings across the board and team blue’s 14nm supply issues are just getting worse.
Meanwhile, in Korea, AMD has outpaced Intel for the first time ever. This info comes from a Korean media outlet according to which 51% of the pre-built PCs were powered by AMD CPUs while the remaining 48.7% by Intel.
This is important news because AMD has maintained a presence in the DIY market since forever but ever since Intel’s new Core architecture and the Intel Insyde campaign started, most OEMs have partnered with the latter, more or less dislodging AMD from the pre-build PC space. With the coming of the Zen architecture and Intel’s recent 14nm troubles, the scales have started to shift in AMD’s favor.
Intel is stuck in an awkward position. Most of its consumer and HEDT offerings (Coffee Lake and Cascade Lake-X) are based on the 14nm node while the company is focusing all its efforts to migrate to the newer 10nm process that powers the Ice lake architecture. This has resulted in shortages of the present 14nm chips, giving AMD ample opportunity to substitute instead.
As per sources, these shortages will continue till at least mid-2020 when Intel is expected to launch the 10nm based Ice Lake server chips and the Comet Lake-S parts (14nm) set to succeed the 9th Gen desktop lineup. This means that AMD has one whole year to operate without any major competition from Intel and regain territory lost over the last decade.
Further reading: