An independent survey by the European Hardware Association found that users who prefer AMD CPUs now make up more than 60% of all respondents. This is a number that is up from 40% in 2018 and can be attributed to AMD's highly successful Zen architecture as well as their process leadership on the 7nm node. The press release from EHA can be found over here.
EHA: The majority of Europeans prefer AMD CPUs
It is hard to believe that just a couple of years ago, Intel had an almost complete monopoly on processors and no one would have seriously considered AMD processors. It is a testament to the company's resilience that the landscape now looks so vastly different. As of late 2019, AMD is looking very much like the champion and Intel the underdog. This independent survey from EHA, reaffirms what we saw in our own Wccftech survey as well and showcases how massively consumer sentiment is shifting towards AMD processors.
AMD's net interest in early 2017 was around 40%, its a pity we do not have early 2016 numbers because that would show us the baseline where the company started from. This quickly jumped to 50% in early 2019 and crossed 60% by the second half of 2019. Considering Intel does not expect its 10nm to ship before 2H 2020, we expect this share to increase even further (barring a second round of price cuts from Intel). EHA Chairman, Koen Crijns had the following to say about the results:
“The last three years has seen AMD gain a lot of momentum in the enthusiast segment,” said EHA chairman Koen Crijns. “With the Ryzen series of CPUs, AMD has eliminated any lingering performance gaps, while offering a great price/performance ratio”.
“The surge in preference from 50% to 60% over recent months, can be explained by the launch of AMD’s latest 3rd generation Ryzen desktop CPU”, said Crijns. “Ryzen 3000 not only offers better performance under multi-threaded workloads, but also under lightly-threaded applications like PC games”.
“While Nvidia is still the dominant force in this segment and 72.8% of the technology enthusiasts, early adopters and influencers who read EHA publications would choose GeForce, the launch of AMD’s aggressively priced Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT products has made an impact”, explained Crijns. “Back in May, less than 19% of our readers were choosing AMD graphics. Today that number is closer to 23%”.
“Our most recent survey shows that people who prefer AMD GPUs almost exclusively combine them with AMD CPUs”, said Crijns. “The combination of Intel CPU with AMD GPU only accounts for 2.9% of the results”. Source: EHA
EHA is crediting the launch of AMD's 3rd generation Ryzen and Threadripper parts for the massive shift in consumer sentiment - and this is not surprising considering this is where 7nm kicked in for the company and AMD graduated from the "value" choice to the "absolute best performing & value" choice. The only thing lacking with AMD right now is its GPU side and this is something I talked about in an exclusive all the way back in 2017 and how RTG would be collateral in AMD's rise to dominance.
While AMD is competing on the best performing ethos in CPUs, the company can chase the value ethos in GPUs, taking advantage of the fact that it's on the 7nm process while NVIDIA is not. The 7nm process would offer some serious economies of scale compared to NVIDIA's 12nm NFF (essentially a repackaged 16nm FF) and AMD can utilize that to snatch some market share from green. AMD's shares have skyrocketed form a measly $2-3 to $40 and one thing is for sure, if AMD ever gets its GPU side in tip-top shape once again, it will see another rally in price.
