AMD's share of desktop CPU shipments fell to 29.9% in the third quarter of 2026, according to new Mercury Research data, shared by PC Gamer. That's a five-point drop from the 34.9% AMD held in Q2, with Intel climbing back to 70.1%. It's also AMD's lowest desktop figure since early 2025, when it sat at around 28%. A year ago, AMD held 33.6% of the desktop market.

Mercury itself admits it isn't sure what caused the swing. Its best guess is that weaker laptop demand let Intel shift more chips to desktops, which usually see a seasonal bump in the third quarter, after Intel had been under-supplying that market earlier in the year. AMD, on the other hand, didn't seem to get that seasonal increase. Mercury also points to AMD's heavier reliance on PC gaming, a market it says has been hurt by supply constraints on gaming GPUs. On top of that, AMD has openly admitted that demand is running ahead of what it can ship, and Lisa Su recently called AMD a "data center first" company.Intel's gain probably says more about supply than about its desktop chips suddenly winning over gamers. Mercury notes that desktop volumes took a large hit in Q2, and both companies saw mobile CPU shipments drop by more than 10% in Q3. In servers, the trend went the other way, with AMD rising to 35.5% from 34.5% the quarter before.