Uh-oh – AMD is getting its butt kicked by Intel right now

Despite enjoying a few years of increased market share, it’s now predicted that AMD Ryzen desktop CPU revenue is expected to fall by around 26% in 2022, with the success of Intel’s Alder lake being named as one of the likely causations.

As reported by WCCFTech, Joseph Moore, market analyst at Morgan Stanley, claims that AMD Ryzen revenue could plummet this year due to a mix of various factors within the industry. The PC market saw a general decline in 2022 (which in itself was caused by various issues), and with fewer folks looking to buy consumer-grade desktop CPUs, competition has been fierce.

Unfortunately for AMD, Intel’s 12th-gen Alder Lake processors were extremely well received and as AMD is lagging behind with next-gen releases, it would appear that folks building a PC didn’t feel like waiting for the arrival of Zen 4.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. While Moore also predicts an additional 2% fall in revenue for AMD Ryzen in 2023, this is being viewed as a market correction, with AMD predicted to see “relative stability thereafter.” AMD is also making gains in other areas of business, such as servers and laptop processors, so while this likely stings, it’s far from the end of days for Team Red.

Analysis: AMD needs to pick up the pace

AMD’s incoming Ryzen 7000 desktop processors could launch in mid-september according to the recent rumors, which also could have attributed to the falling sales of Ryzen 5000 CPUs – after all, very few folks want to buy a product just before it’s about to be superseded.

That said, there is allegedly a lot of ‘excess’ stock hanging about, and once Ryzen 7000 chips are even unveiled, it’s likely the previous generation of processors will see a decent price reduction to clear stock, which is great news for those on a tight-budget looking for a bargain.

If AMD wants to get a head start though, it’ll need to release Ryzen 7000 before Intel pushes Raptor Lake out onto the market. When the Ryzen 5000 series processors first arrived they were heralded as the best choice for PC gamers – who make up a sizable part of the DIY PC market – and it simply cannot afford to lose that reputation. It plays into what attracts Team Red’s loyal fanbase, after all, but you can’t sell yourself on fanboys’ expectations alone.

Other industry factors could come into play and affect either party though, regardless of who has the better product. Motherboard sales are expected to take a huge dive this year, with both Asus and Gigabyte (who make up approximately 70% of the entire market) estimating sales volumes to drop by approximately 25% compared to 2021. 

It’s being claimed that GPU bundles that contained mobos are partially to blame as consumers were essentially forced into buying unnecessary hardware just to get their hands on an Nvidia Ampere or AMD RDNA2 graphics card. You would assume that as AMD Ryzen 7000 will require AM5 motherboards later this year (as well as Intel’s 13th-Gen Core processors requiring new 700-series motherboard chipsets) that we could see a boost in sales, but a recent DigiTimes report suggests otherwise.

It’s going to be fairly hard to sell processors into a market when the motherboards necessary to use them are predicted to sell in underwhelming volumes. Regardless of all the current rumors floating around, the best course of action is likely to be just… wait and see. We have no idea if all of the hype from either side will live up to expectations, so while it’s tempting to jump into an upgrade immediately, wait until we hear some solid performance data.