AMD hits 45% CPU share on Steam, closes gap with Intel

AMD claimed 44.9% of Windows gaming CPUs in Steam's May 2025 hardware survey, per Tom's Hardware. That's up from 36% a year ago and marks the closest AMD has come to parity with Intel since Steam started tracking CPU vendors.

Intel still leads at 55.1%, but the gap is shrinking fast. Ryzen 5000 and 7000 series chips are the likely drivers — competitive pricing and strong multi-core performance have made them the default recommendation for budget and mid-tier builds over the past two years. Intel's 13th and 14th-gen instability issues didn't help.

This matters if you're planning an upgrade. More AMD chips in the wild means better driver support, more optimization focus from game studios, and a higher chance your next Ryzen build gets day-one attention when patches drop. Intel's still the safe bet for pure single-thread FPS in esports titles, but AMD's closed that gap to single-digit percentages in most benchmarks.

Check which CPU lands on our current optimization playbooks — both platforms hit triple-digit frames in Warzone and BO6 if you pair them right.