AMD takes a hit in Steam's latest processor usage survey partly thanks to cut-price Intel Comet Lake CPUs

Apart from a seemingly outlier of a bump, AMD has been picking at Intel’s processor usage share for many months now, to the point that Team Red even managed to break 30% in Steam’s Hardware & Software Survey last month. However, that figure has now dropped to 28.53% for June’s report, with Intel reclaiming +1.72% of Windows users and even +0.09% of Linux system gamers.

Sources have stated that Intel has been cutting the prices of its most recent families of processors, Rocket Lake and Comet Lake, but it seems more likely that the latter 10th Generation of chips is proving to be quite attractive to desktop PC builders at the moment. Many Comet Lake SKUs have been reduced in price at major retailers like Amazon, making them a tempting purchase, especially in comparison to the less than overwhelming Rocket Lake lineup.

For instance, the popular Intel Core i7-10700K is currently available for just over US$323 on Amazon (down from US$387), with the chip offering buyers 8 cores and 16 threads of processing power that can reach clock rates of 5.1 GHz. Along with this ideal chip for gaming, shoppers can also pick up the more budget-friendly i3-10100F for just US$107.90 (reduced from US$129). The Comet Lake parts are available to buy right now as well, so there is no global processor shortage-affected delay here.

The Steam processor usage share doesn’t indicate a slippery slope backwards for AMD though, before fans start becoming over-concerned. There are choppy waters ahead for Team Red to face in the CPU arena, with Intel’s hybrid Alder Lake series starting to show some promise, but there’s also AMD’s 3D V-cache stacked chiplet design apparently incoming by the end of the year to counter that growing threat.

Buy the Intel Core i7-10700KF on Amazon