The European Hardware Association (EHA) has found that 60% of hardware enthusiasts prefer AMD CPUs over Intel CPUs, which is significantly higher than in 2018 and 2017, which found that 50% and 40% preferred AMD over Intel, respectively. These survey results correlate with what we've seen in the market, which is low AMD CPU supply likely caused by high demand and AMD CPUs topping the charts at retailers like Amazon.
The EHA believes this increased interest is related to the launch of AMD's Ryzen 3000 series, which seems like the clear answer. Ryzen 3000 has certainly pushed performance up significantly, with the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X and the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, the first CPUs of their class on a mainstream platform. Though not all enthusiasts may plan on buying these CPUs (something like the Ryzen 5 3600 is much more affordable), it certainly helps AMD's perception in the market.
The survey also had data about GPU preference, and while AMD's performance there isn't as impressive, it is up from just earlier this year, from 19% to 23%. Additionally, almost all respondents who said they preferred AMD GPUs said they preferred it with an AMD CPU rather than an Intel CPU. It seems that AMD CPU buyers are more likely to also buy an AMD GPU (and vice versa), which is not very surprising.
What the EHA has reported is more or less what we have expected to see: growing AMD dominance among enthusiasts. Though enthusiasts are just a drop in the bucket to both AMD and Intel, they are still important since enthusiasts are often reviewers, and perhaps more importantly, the kind of people that friends and family might go to for advice when they're looking at buying a new PC. Convincing this small population gives AMD a little bit of an edge when it comes to the more profitable OEM PC, laptop, and server markets.
