Intel won back five points of desktop CPU shipments from AMD in the third quarter, taking AMD below 30%.
New Mercury Research figures, first published by PC Gamer, put AMD’s share of desktop CPU shipments at 29.9% in Q3 2026, down from 34.9% in Q2. Intel rose from 65.1% to 70.1%. The swing erases AMD’s gains from the previous quarter, and its share falls below 30% of desktop shipments.
The numbers
AMD’s new figure is its lowest since early 2025, when it sat at around 28%. TechPowerUp says AMD held 33.6% of the desktop market in Q3 2025, so the drop shows up year on year as well as quarter on quarter.
| Desktop CPU shipment share | Q2 2026 | Q3 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMD | 34.9% | 29.9% | −5 points |
| Intel | 65.1% | 70.1% | +5 points |
The reversal is sharper because AMD had been on a run. According to Tom’s Hardware, its desktop share ticked up to 34.9% in Q2, from 33.2% in Q1 and 32.2% a year earlier. That high came in a weak market: Mercury called the desktop x86 market “ugly”, and it shrank by more than 20% year on year and quarter on quarter.
Across all its CPUs, including embedded SoCs and IoT chips, Intel’s share moved far less. According to World Today News, it rose 0.2 points from the previous quarter to 66.1%, though that’s still 3 points below the 69.1% it held a year earlier.
Why Intel gained
Mercury hasn’t identified a definitive reason for such a large quarterly shift, and its main explanation is speculative. According to TechPowerUp, both companies saw mobile CPU shipments fall by more than 10% in Q3. With laptop demand cooling, Mercury thinks Intel moved more of its supply to desktop chips, which usually see a seasonal bump in the third quarter. Intel had also been under-supplying desktops earlier in the year, so it had room to grow when demand picked up.
AMD didn’t appear to get that bump.
AMD, however, did not appear to have a seasonal increase, which resulted in Intel having a very large sequential and on-year gain in desktop CPU market share.
Mercury Research
According to Mercury, a second factor was Intel’s steady volume through OEM and system-builder channels, while AMD’s shipments sagged in its core gaming and enthusiast categories. TechPowerUp reports Mercury points to AMD’s heavier reliance on PC gaming, a market hurt by supply constraints on gaming GPUs. Digital Citizen notes that high graphics card prices, expensive memory, and rising storage costs have made building or upgrading a gaming PC less attractive in 2026. Intel also warned that CPU prices will rise as AI demand shifts the market.
AMD’s attention is also elsewhere. According to TechPowerUp, Lisa Su recently called AMD a “data center first” company. Its EPYC processors now host Google’s confidential TPU 8tx. According to TechPowerUp, AMD’s server share rose to 35.5% in Q3 from 34.5% the quarter before. According to TechSpot, Intel reportedly accounted for 64.5% of server CPUs sold between July and September, down from 72.2% in Q3 2025. Intel’s 256-core Diamond Rapids Xeon 7 is due in 2027.
What the figures don’t show
Mercury counts processors shipped, not retail sales or the CPUs installed in people’s PCs. The data doesn’t show buyers abandoning Ryzen. Digital Citizen notes that AMD’s X3D chips still perform strongly in gaming benchmarks, and that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D remains a leading recommendation.
PC Gamer called the increase “almost too big to be believed.” Jacob Ridley warned against reading it as good news, writing, “I wouldn’t mistake Intel ‘gaining market share’ as a healthy sign for the company or the wider industry.” Digital Citizen also argued the figures “do not establish a lasting reversal in the competitive market.”
Intel’s Nova Lake consumer chips, built on 18A, have yet to launch. If Mercury’s theory holds, the Q4 figures will show whether Intel’s gain lasts.
