Valve released the Steam Hardware Survey for May 2026, revealing insight into PC gaming trends and patterns that define the industry. As always, we have data on how much RAM people have, what GPUs are the most popular, etc., but perhaps the most interesting bit of info is the CPU usage. AMD has now reached 46.06% share on Steam across all platforms, with almost 45% of Windows PCs using AMD processors.

The exact number for Windows is 44.97%, so we're counting that as 45% for AMD, while Intel is at 55.02% for the month of May. Compared to April, that's a 0.79% drop for the Blue Team, while also a 0.79% gain for the Red Team. Compared to the start of the year, in January, AMD only held 43.34% of the share while Intel accounted for 56.64%, so the patterns either way are being reinforced.

AMD keeps climbing the charts while Intel's lead is on a steady decline. It still has the biggest slice of the pie because of the sheer legacy left behind, and since AMD only became competitive in 2017. That was the year the first mainstream Ryzen chips came out and challenged Intel for the throne.

AMD planted the seeds of the Zen architecture during its darkest years, and that multi-year gamble has borne fruit to the point that the data now reflects it. To be clear, Intel is also very competitive these days, especially on the mobile front with Panther Lake and with the upcoming Nova Lake family set to take a true generational leap for desktop.

Most recently, the advent of 3D V-Cache has helped AMD secure the gaming segment with chips that consistently outperform other offerings. The company has released several X3D variants of its existing CPUs for both current and older generations, such as the newly announced 10th Anniversary Edition of the 5800X3D, the chip that started it all. On the other hand, we have the 9950X3D2 with extra cache stacked underneath both its 8-core CCDs for the first time in Ryzen history.

Funnily enough, AMD has also reached a similar 46% share of the server x86 CPU market thanks to its EPYC lineup, which is about to get refreshed with Venice this year and Verano in 2027. L

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.