If you have been following the processor wars for the last decade, you know the narrative has shifted from Intel’s total dominance to a legitimate two-horse race. The latest data from Mercury Research paints a picture of what many are calling AMD’s Ryzen rollercoaster, a steady, high-speed climb that is currently making life very difficult for Intel. While Intel still moves a larger volume of chips overall, the momentum in the high-stakes server market is swinging toward AMD at an alarming rate for the blue team.
The numbers for the end of 2025 and early 2026 show that AMD has carved out nearly 30% of the server unit market. To put that in perspective, they were sitting at less than 2% just seven or eight years ago. It is a massive swing that reflects a change in how big cloud providers and enterprise businesses are spending their money.
Why the server room is turning red
For a long time, Intel was the safe bet for any IT manager. You bought Xeon because it was the industry standard. But the ride on AMD’s Ryzen rollercoaster has brought a different value proposition to the table: more cores and better power efficiency. In a world where data centers are struggling with massive electricity bills and cooling costs, the performance-per-watt advantage of AMD’s EPYC chips has become impossible to ignore.
Intel’s struggle in this space is partly a result of its own success. To try and keep up with demand for server chips, Intel actually had to pull back on producing its consumer desktop and laptop processors. This created a vacuum that AMD was more than happy to fill. Even with Intel prioritizing its server production, AMD’s EPYC shipments grew at triple the usual seasonal rate.
The revenue gap is closing fast
Market share in units is one thing, but the real story is in the revenue. AMD’s Ryzen rollercoaster has hit a new peak here, with the company now capturing over 40% of the total revenue in the server space. This means that when companies are buying the most expensive, high-end processors, they are increasingly choosing AMD over Intel.
This is a tough pill for Intel to swallow. When you lose the “crème de la crème” of the market, you are left fighting for the high-volume but lower-margin contracts. Intel is still the king of the mainstream OEM market, like the thousands of PCs sold to schools and offices, but in the high-performance world of AI and massive cloud clusters, AMD is the one setting the pace.
Production hurdles and the road ahead
Intel is currently fighting a war on two fronts. On one side, they are dealing with supply constraints that have made it hard to get enough silicon to their partners. On the other, they are facing a performance gap that AMD has exploited with its Zen architecture and X3D technologies.
Industry analysts suggest that Intel might not see a true turnaround until late 2026 or 2027 when their new manufacturing nodes and architectures fully mature. Until then, AMD’s Ryzen rollercoaster seems likely to continue its upward trajectory, especially as their 5th Gen EPYC chips now account for more than half of their total server earnings.
If you are looking at the tangible side of this shift, the impact is already visible in the hardware hitting the market this quarter. Both companies are expected to reveal more about their 2027 roadmaps at major trade shows this summer, with Intel banking heavily on its “Panther Lake” and “Clearwater Forest” architectures to reclaim ground.
