For several years now, we have been covering the periodic data crashes of Mindfactory.de as a way of cataloging how AMD and Intel’s prosperity in the retail channel market has changed. As always, treat this data carefully – while Mindfactory.de has been releasing these reports for years, it’s just one company. Product adoption rates may vary by country for different reasons, and in the case of AMD, it has historically enjoyed strong support in Germany after building several factories in Dresden (at the time when AMD owned factories).
In other words, do not assume that these figures can be strictly applied to Newegg or Amazon. We would expect that there would be a somewhat different distribution pattern on the sites, and although the broad scope of the numbers seems comparable, this type of global comparison will inevitably lack subtleties.
Close an important 2020
You can see the impact of COVID-19 in the graph below – the atypical seasonal surge in April shows that Mindfactory.de delivered more total CPUs in the month than in December 2019.
Image via Ingebor, via Imgur
In percentage terms, Mindfactory.de’s reports from AMD at 85 percent and 83 percent revenue are not significantly higher than what we saw in previous months – AMD seized 91 percent of sales in April 2020 – but it’s a clear record regarding total number of CPUs sent. The 5600X and 5800X were much easier to find than the 5900X or 5950X.
Image by Ingebor, via Imgur.
There is a subtlety in the revenue figures that I want to draw your attention to. If you compare the top chart (number of CPUs) with the bottom (total revenue), you will see that Intel CPUs contribute more revenue for most of the chart period than their market share seems. This is due to Intel’s historically higher average selling prices (ASPs). If you sell 10 Intel chips for $ 500 and 20 AMD chips for $ 200, you earn more revenue from Intel than AMD, even though you sent more AMD than Intel. This has been the case, give or take for the past 15 years. However, that changed in November and December 2020. In these months, Intel chips contributed less to revenue than would be the case according to their sales figures. The graph below shows why:
Image by Ingebor, via Imgur
Intel’s average sales prices have fallen among AMDs, at the same time as the market for Ryzen CPUs exploded, probably driven by the recent refresh of the Ryzen 5000 family. You can also see the impact of disk shortages at the end of the year, with AMD SKU prices rising in many cases, even if you ignore the bold overall trend line that the average ASP shows. The Ryzen 9 3900X, 3800X, 3700X and Ryzen 5 3600 all show price increases by the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. However, this did not stop them from selling like hot cakes.
Assuming that the Intel average for April 2020 comes out to ~ 340 €, the average of Intel in December 2020 of 249,53 € … is not good.
Image by Ingebor, via Imgur
It shows the revenue distribution of AMD and Intel CPUs as recorded by Mindfactory.de. It’s not hard to see why AMD’s star soared while Intel hit hard.
Intel’s best chance to recover in the DIY retail space will be later this year when Rocket Lake drops. The new CPU family is generally expected to deliver the full measure of Intel’s IPC gains with Sunny Cove over Coffee Lake (about 1.18x), but the higher frequencies that Intel originally gave up with ICL on mobile devices. In short, we should see that the processor of Intel’s CPU increases between 1.1x and 1.25x, depending on the workload. This is also part of the reason why Intel probably decided to drop back to eight core points for its new CPUs. It might have made more sense to focus on maximum single-wire performance in a smaller number of cores, as opposed to the 10-core Comet Lake chips.
The retail market is a clear minority of all computers – computer sales in general had a hard time during the pandemic – but in this space, and as far as Mindfactory.de specifically is concerned, Advanced Micro Devices is tearing up the sales charts. .
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