Intel has long been the best seller when it comes to building PCs, even though AMD has managed a slow and steady climb in market share. These have been some of the strongest quarters for AMD yet according to Mercury Research when compared to Intel, but early indications suggest that things are about to get even better for AMD. According to multiple analysts and reports from retailers, AMD's new Ryzen 7 9800X3D has been selling extremely well, to the point that most stores won't have it in stock for another week at the earliest if not for another month.

Retailers are struggling to keep the 9800X3D in stock

It could be stock problems, but reports suggest that it's selling like hotcakes

The problem with relying on retailers running out of stock as an indicator of strong sales is that sometimes it simply means there wasn't much stock to begin with. However, given Intel's struggles with the 14900K and instability issues with Arrow Lake, it's not unreasonable to assume that sales might be underperforming.

Adding to this, reports from MindFactory—a retailer that shares its sales figures—claim it sold 4,245 units of AMD CPUs compared to just 395 units of Intel CPUs. While this is only one retailer's data and should be taken with a grain of salt, the trends are compelling. For instance, Amazon, Newegg, and Best Buy are all sold out of the 9800X3D, whereas the 285K remains in stock on Amazon. The 265K, which is more comparable to the 9800X3D, is readily available at all three retailers as well.

Furthermore, AMD's sales figures have been steadily rising for some time. It makes sense that an event like this—where the 9800X3D is universally praised as the best gaming CPU—would positively impact AMD's sales. While Intel hasn’t been releasing official sales data, it's becoming harder to maintain confidence in the company. Their CPUs have had a lot of struggles, and it's clear that things aren't getting any better anytime soon.

AMD just has to keep things going

The company is on the right track

The thing with AMD is that the company doesn't need to make any major steps forward. It has a working formula with efficient CPUs and decent year-on-year gains, with very few stability issues to speak of. While AM5 obviously had issues as a new platform, those were fixed quite quickly and also (for the most part) haven't resulted in any damaged hardware.

AMD, given that it's ahead right now in a lot of ways, doesn't need to make any big, risky steps to catch up, and that's a major advantage to have. While it's not put the company in a position to dominate in market share, the trends are clearly moving in a favorable way for AMD. While the 9800X3D (and individual retailers) are only just single points of information, the emerging trend is that AMD has been on the rise for a while, and a scenario like this creates a lot of momentum in favor of AMD.

We're hoping to see more reports in the future of how sales figures look for AMD, but right now, it seems that you're making a mistake if you're building a gaming PC with an Intel chip inside. For productivity, Intel is still one of the best, but the choice for gamers is very, very clear.