It is the beginning of a new month, and Valve just updated its Steam Hardware Survey, giving us an updated glimpse into the millions of systems with Steam installed. The latest survey shows an interesting drop in AMD's CPU market share, hitting its lowest point during 2021.
Valve's Steam Hardware Survey is not exactly a scientific tracker of processor market share. The survey relies on millions of volunteers to participate, providing data on their rigs with Valve crunching the data ready for publication every single month. However, it still represents a great way to get some insights into market fluctuations and see where consumers are spending their money.
According to the report for August, released September 1, the CPU market share saw some interesting developments in terms of ownership. In August, AMD saw a 1.88% decline, with the latest figures now sitting at 27.31%, a decline from July's 29.19% share.
A 1.88% decline may not seem like a lot, but once you account for all the millions of PCs participating in the survey, that's potentially more than a hundred thousand systems. At 27.31%, this represents an all-time low for AMD in 2021.
Before jumping to any conclusions, we have to note that the survey doesn't publish detailed collection statistics and is far from transparent about where the numbers come from. There's also a margin of error (usually at least a couple of percent) for any survey, so this might have just been a "bad luck" month in terms of users that were sampled. It could also mean that consumers are just buying more of the competing products from Intel. Either way, that's where the data stands and we'll see in the coming months if AMD's share keeps declining or gets back on an upward trajectory.
