The big picture: The CPU-Z survey for the first quarter of 2025 has revealed drastic shifts in multiple areas of the PC sector as users upgrade their CPUs, GPUs, and other components. Although Intel and Nvidia maintain market dominance in processors and graphics cards, respectively, AMD has made significant strides against both.
Telemetry results from CPU-Z for April 1 show that eight-core processors are finally more popular than six-core chips. Monitor and GPU adoption also saw notable swings.
CPUs with six cores, such as AMD’s venerable Ryzen 5 3600X, have remained popular among budget-minded users for years. Upon its 2019 release, TechSpot labeled it the best all-around value CPU. However, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which TechSpot crowned the new king of gaming CPUs last year, appears to have dethroned it.
CPU-Z Q1’25 Stats now live!
8-core CPUs overtake 6-core as top choice
27″ monitors surpass 24″ as most common
Nvidia GPUs down 6.4% to 67.9%
ntel CPUs down 10% to 56.3%
More details: https://t.co/d5GWNNBifd– Doc TB (@d0cTB) April 2, 2025
Eight-core CPU adoption leapt by 32% in the new CPU-Z survey, accounting for the largest portion of processors – 24.7%. The key driver is likely the 9800X3D, which is by far the most popular CPU in its debut quarter, being installed in 4.3% of systems with the 5600X in second place at 2.1%.
A similar trend appeared in the April Steam survey, where AMD processors reached a record 37.62% user share. Although Intel processors are still more popular overall on both charts, AMD’s CPU-Z share reached 43.7%, shrinking the gap by an impressive 16.6%.
Team Red also gained on Nvidia in the GPU sector by the same percentage. Although AMD’s graphics cards remain shut out of the top 10, the company reported selling its new RX 9070 and 9070 XT in unprecedented numbers. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s competing RTX 50 series cards have received a lukewarm reception and suffered severe supply constraints. Despite the launch troubles, the RTX 5080 is the only new GPU to appear in April’s CPU-Z survey.
Additionally, 27-inch monitors have usurped 24-inch displays as the most common size. Users also upgraded to 32-inch and 34-inch screens in significant numbers. Although 1080p remains the most popular resolution, monitor upgrades likely drove the uplift in 1440p and 4K adoption visible in this month’s results.
AMD’s ongoing domination of the CPU sector is also reflected in recent Amazon sales data. The company captured almost 80 percent of the market in March and generated five times as much revenue as Intel. Unsurprisingly, the 9800X3D pulled far ahead of the rest of the field, selling over 6,000 units with the next three most popular processors posting around 3,000 each.
