AMD expects record CPU sales to keep growing
Image: Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
If you’ve been tracking AMD’s market share in the PC CPU market, you know that it’s continually climbed over the past year or so. Chief executive Dr. Lisa Su told Wall Street that she expects that trend to continue, even after the company’s desktop CPU business reached record highs during the third quarter of 2025.
AMD’s Client and Gaming segment of the business sold $4 billion worth of processors, CPUs, and semi-custom chips for the console business during the third quarter, but was slightly surpassed by a record $4.3 billion from the data center. Given the ravenous appetite for AI, its efforts in the data center dominated the company’s third-quarter 2025 earnings call — analysts didn’t ask a single question specifically about its PC business.
That’s somewhat surprising, given AMD’s continued success in the PC market. The company’s client business, made up of its CPU sales, recorded a record $2.8 billion.
“Our PC processor business is performing exceptionally well, with record quarterly sales as the strong demand environment and breadth of our leadership Ryzen portfolio accelerates growth,” Su told analysts in a transcript provided by Investing.com. “Desktop CPU sales reached an all-time high, with record channel sell-in and sell-out led by robust demand for our Ryzen 9000 processors, which deliver unmatched performance across gaming, productivity, and content creation applications.”
AMD’s desktop CPU share has gained almost 10 percentage points since last year, and Su said she expects that trend to continue. “Looking ahead, we see significant opportunity to continue growing our client business faster than the overall PC market, based on the strength of our Ryzen portfolio, broader platform coverage, and expanded go-to-market investments,” she said.
Interestingly, Ryzen notebooks even “increased sharply” during the quarter, Su said. That’s surprising, given that Intel has maintained the typical 80-20 split between AMD and Intel, especially in the notebook business. If the chipmaker is cutting into that, Intel will face a significant attack on multiple fronts.
AMD said less about its efforts in the GPU business, though it noted that revenue and channel sell-out grew significantly, driven by the Radeon 9000. The company’s FSR4 technology, which uses upscaling and AI frame generation within the RX 9000 generation to improve frame rates, now supports more than 85 games.
AMD also saw a boost from its semi-custom business as Microsoft and Sony ramp up console production for the holiday sales season. That’s a double-edged sword, as the company’s outlook includes a decline in “strong double digits” in gaming revenue, presumably reflecting a lull after the holiday console sales boom.
AMD’s second-quarter revenue increased 36 percent year over year to $9.2 billion, with net income up 31 percent to $1.243 billion.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld
Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers’ News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.
