When you've been following PC gaming hardware for as long as I have, there are certain norms that have been around for so long, that it's difficult to shake them off. For example, in the CPU market, traditional wisdom when I was younger was that AMD was often the plucky underdog, snipping at Intel's heels.
Over the past few years though, the metric seems to have seriously shifted. A look at Amazon's best-selling CPU list right now reveals a top ten domination of AMD processors, with Intel's best effort scraping in at number 12 (via Tom's Hardware). Topping the list is the AM4-socketed Ryzen 7 5700X, a Zen 3 CPU that (at its current price of a mere $130) seems to be treading the price/performance line rather nicely.
Let's not forget, while the 5700X might be on an older platform and have a couple of years of release time under its belt, it's still a formidable eight-core, 16-thread processor that seems to have caught buyers' attention with its attractive pricing and excellent performance. Right under that is the six-core Ryzen 5 5600X, while the mighty Ryzen 7 7800X3D sits pretty in third place.
As for Intel? The Core i5 13600KF puts on the best team blue showing, but it only manages a 12th place spot. It's an attractive chip for the money (currently selling at a discount for $175), but it's noticeable by the sheer weight of AMD chips sitting above it.
An interesting new addition is the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, a processor that's only been out for five minutes yet has already made its way to fifth position. Given the stunning performance on offer that should probably come as no surprise, but it's not exactly cheap at $479.
Still, it seems to be shifting in serious numbers right now—which should probably come as some relief for AMD, as the rest of the Ryzen 9000 series reportedly suffered poor sales at launch earlier this year.
Intel's Arrow Lake chips have also only just made it to market, but their reception was less than glowing. Our Nick came away impressed with the power efficiency but little else when he reviewed the Core Ultra 9 285K and Core Ultra 5 245K, and the sales seem to reflect the poor reviews from multiple outlets around the troubled chips launch.
You have to scroll down all the way to number 39 to find an Arrow Lake chip, where the aforementioned Core Ultra 9 285K makes a belated appearance. At $699, and with less than phenomenal performance in many benchmarks compared to the Core i9 14900K of the previous generation (currently available for $438 and sitting at number 15 in this list), it's a hard sell, that's for sure.
More bad news for Intel then. Whether this is a reflection of a lack of consumer confidence in Intel chips since the (now resolved) crashing debacle over the summer, or simply an acknowledgement of price/performance ratios driving sales overall, is unclear.
Still, what with Intel's ongoing woes over its operation as a whole, it doesn't bode well that the biggest retailer on the planet is showing buyer's preference for the competition in the desktop CPU market.
If I were a time-traveller, showing Young Andy™ this list would blow his tiny little mind. Still, the times they are a'changing—and if this list is any indication of the market overall, it looks like Intel is on the backfoot when it comes to CPU sales this time around.
