AMD hits 30.87% share against Intel in Steam's survey for October but Alder Lake could reverse the trend

The October hardware and software survey from Steam has yet again offered an intriguing snapshot of the overall state of the processor market, at least when it comes down to Intel vs. AMD. While there have been a couple of bumps in the road for AMD over the last 12 months in terms of gaining share, for the most part Team Red has managed to take significant chunks out of Intel’s share, which included crossing the 30% mark last month.

The latest report shows that AMD’s share has now risen from 30.33% to 30.87%, or over half a percentage point, leaving Intel with 69.13%. Windows-based machines with Ryzen chips have been popular with gamers, as AMD has gained +0.69% share in this particular field. However, there is a different story to tell with Linux users, with Intel actually gaining +0.45% share here. There are good deals to be had on some powerful Zen 3 processors at the moment, with the Ryzen 7 5800X down from US$449 to US$386.66 on Amazon.

Things could look different on the Steam survey over the next few months though, and there’s always the possibility of a massive hiccup over the holiday season similar to the one from 2020. Intel’s Alder Lake series is now here, and while the i9-12900K might be a bit pricey for some at US$589 SRP despite being a very fast chip (Turbo 3.0 to 5.2 GHz) it is the i5-12600K that could be a winner for Team Blue. Priced at a reasonable US$289 SRP, this chip can manage up to 4.9 GHz clock rates, and it has shown itself to be a decent synthetic and real-world benchmark competitor.

Buy the Intel Core i5-12600K on Amazon