AMD hits record CPU market share on Steam
AMD is rapidly gaining market share in Steam’s hardware survey – Will Intel be dethroned?
Valve has released its November Steam Hardware Survey, and it confirms that AMD is continuing to gain market share within the gaming CPU market. In August, AMD surpassed 40% market share for the first time. AMD now has a 43.56% market share, up 0.52% this month.
Back in 2022, Intel dominated Steam’s userbase with 77% market share. Today, Intel’s market share is 56.44%. If Intel’s market share continues to decline at this rate, AMD will hold over 50% of the CPU market among Steam users sometime in 2026.
AMD’s rapid rise in CPU market share implies that most new gaming PCs are being built with AMD CPUs. Steam’s Hardware Survey is a dataset that aims to be representative of all Steam users. This means the data includes both old and new gaming PCs. AMD’s rapid market-share growth suggests many PC gamers are retiring older Intel-based gaming PCs and replacing them with AMD-based systems. If Intel wants to stop this decline, it needs to entice PC gamers to invest in Intel-powered systems.
(CPU Usage on Steam (AMD VS Intel) – via Steam Hardware Survey)
Intel’s market share will decrease rapidly if it can’t fix its gaming problems
Intel’s current problems in the PC gaming market stem from its lacklustre Arrow Lake CPU lineup. Today’s Intel Arrow Lake CPUs are often outperformed by their last-generation Raptor Lake counterparts. This gives PC gamers no incentive to buy new Intel CPUs for their gaming PCs. In contrast, AMD delivered significant performance gains with its Ryzen 7 9800X3D gaming CPU, securing performance leadership for AMD (at least in the gaming market).
Intel’s high CPU share on Steam comes from its legacy users. Not all PC gamers are frequent upgraders. This is why it can take a long time for market share to change on Steam’s hardware survey. If current trends continue, more Intel-based PCs will be retired, and more AMD-powered PCs will be built to replace them. If Intel cannot reassert itself within the PC gaming market, AMD will be poised to take Intel’s mantle as Steam’s most-used CPU provider.
You can join the discussion on AMD’s rising CPU market share amongst gamers on the OC3D Forums.
