AMD finally beats Intel on server revenue but Nvidia is still miles ahead

The server market is growing faster than the desktop market, despite my instinctive reluctance. I'm told this is due to the newfangled "artificial intelligent", which is why Nvidia is doing so well. They expect to continue doing well with Blackwell. Nvidia is not the only player on the server market. There's also a shift afoot in the world of datacentre processors.

AMD has outsold Intel for the first ever time in the datacentre sector, confirming a trend that was long overdue. This information comes from X user Sravan Kondojjala (via Tom's Hardware), which charts the datacentre revenues for the two companies compared to Nvidia's network revenue.

SemiAnalysis compares it to Nvidia’s similar amount of network revenue to show that AMD and Intel’s server revenue still lags far behind Nvidia’s overall datacentre revenues. After all, Nvidia’s networking division is a small bean compared to its computing division.

Intel's Q3 AI revenue was $3.3 Billion, while AMD's was $3.55 Billion. Nvidia's datacentre revenues in Q2 were $26.3 billion, which is more than three times AMD and Intel's combined Q3 datacentre revenues.

It's not surprising. AI workloads demand a lot of GPUs, sorry, "AI Accelerators", to process all the data. But servers also require CPUs, and AMD has finally caught up and surpassed Intel in this area.

AMD has been edging Intel out of the lead for some time, but it was not always so close. AMD Epyc shares used to be a distant second to Intel Xeon shares. SemiAnalysis chart shows this: Follow the yellow line towards 2021, and you'll see the gap between AMD and Intel's revenues widen. AMD has only started to make real gains since mid-2023.

Intel's financial struggles are a part of the reason for this. Intel has been struggling financially, despite exceeding its Q3 financial targets. AMD is also doing better in general, as it recently posted record Q3 revenue.

However, it's important to not draw the wrong conclusions from revenue alone. Intel still dominates the market for actual shipments, as in chips that are actually on server racks. In Q2, AMD had a share of the server industry of 23%, while Intel held 77%. Intel still dominates the market. This is also true for the overall computer processor market, where the Blue Team holds a 60-40 advantage.

Revenue is a good way to assess trends and a company's finances. AMD is doing well under this metric, while Intel is not.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, especially the new AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, is the biggest metaphorical stamp that we gamers can use to illustrate this. Intel's Arrow Lake processors are too expensive and offer too little performance compared to previous-generation chips.

Don't think that I'm enjoying this assessment either. Even though it's fun to bash big companies, I feel pangs now, seeing how Intel is receiving blow after blow. It's sad when you do it too much. Plus, I'm sure that we all want to have some real competition in the CPU market.

To be a bit more positive on this front, Wccftech points to the fact that Intel is only now bringing Granite Rapids processors to market. They're supposed to be excellent performers. We'll have to wait and see what happens. It's time for a comeback.