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There’s a clear disconnect in the AMD narrative right now, and if you only look at the headlines—many of which read something like AMD Stock Slips Despite September Steam Gains—you’re missing the signal for the noise. On one hand, you have the September Steam Hardware Survey, a monthly pulse check of the PC gaming community. The data is unambiguous: AMD continues to systematically chip away at Intel’s dominance in the CPU space.
The latest figures show AMD gaining another 1.15% share, bringing its total to 41.31% of Steam users. In a market this mature, that’s not a rounding error; it’s a sustained advance. Over the last five months, Intel’s share has eroded from 60.44% to 58.61%. That’s a drop of nearly two percentage points—or 1.83, to be exact. In isolation, this is a clean, simple victory. It’s a testament to a multi-year strategy of delivering competitive products that resonate with a notoriously discerning consumer base.
But the market, as it often does, is telling a different story. While gamers were installing their new Ryzen processors, `AMD stock price today` was down. Not by much, just 0.79%, but the direction is what matters. It’s a subtle but persistent refusal by Wall Street to reward what looks like a clear win on the consumer front. This is the part of the data that I find genuinely puzzling, and it requires us to look beyond the CPU column in the Steam survey.
The Two-Front War AMD Is Losing
The core of the issue is that AMD is fighting a war on two fronts, and its success in one theater is being completely overshadowed by its vulnerability in the other. While the company’s CPU division is executing a brilliant ground campaign against Intel, its GPU division is being subjected to an aerial blitzkrieg by Nvidia.
Let’s stick with the Steam data. AMD’s GPU share sits at a meager 17.81%. That number isn't just low; it's stagnant. It’s a world away from Nvidia’s colossal 74.12% market share. Think about that for a moment. For every one gamer running an AMD Radeon card, there are more than four running an Nvidia GeForce card. This isn’t a competition; it’s a market consolidation. AMD’s strategy of offering comparable performance at a discount simply hasn't broken the consumer inertia and brand loyalty that Nvidia has cultivated for decades.
This GPU weakness is like a strategic vulnerability in AMD’s balance sheet, and the market knows it. The AI boom that propped up so much of the tech sector in 2025 was largely an `Nvidia stock` story. The demand was for server-grade GPUs to power large language models, a segment where Nvidia’s CUDA architecture has created an almost impenetrable moat. AMD has offerings, but it’s not the default choice. It’s the alternative.
This brings us to the recent announcement of a partnership between Nvidia and Intel. The market’s reaction was immediate and negative for AMD. Details on the collaboration remain scarce (a fact that institutional investors detest), but the implication is potent. Two of AMD’s largest competitors are joining forces. Is this a foundry deal where Intel will manufacture chips for Nvidia? Is it a deeper integration of Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs at the platform level? The ambiguity is the problem. It creates a new, formidable "what if" scenario that AMD’s risk models now have to account for. What happens if the two giants decide to optimize their hardware and software to squeeze AMD out entirely?
The Market's Cold Calculus
This is where the retail investor mindset diverges from the institutional one. The gamer sees a better CPU and makes a rational choice. The market sees a complex, multi-variable equation of future cash flows, competitive moats, and strategic risk. The Steam survey is a data point about the past. The Intel-Nvidia partnership is a data point about the future. And the market is, above all else, a forward-looking mechanism.
AMD’s CPU gains are like a boxer who has developed a fantastic, point-scoring jab. It’s landing consistently, it’s frustrating the opponent, and it’s winning rounds on the judges’ scorecards. But Wall Street isn’t watching the scorecards. It’s watching for the knockout punch, and it sees AMD’s opponent (`Nvidia stock` in this analogy) still has a devastating right hook in the form of its GPU and AI dominance. Now, with the Intel partnership, it looks like that opponent just brought a friend into the ring.
The analyst consensus rating for AMD remains a "Moderate Buy," with an average price target suggesting an 11.32% upside. But these ratings often lag market sentiment. The real story is in the price action following the partnership news. The market isn't rewarding AMD for taking a slice of Intel's CPU pie because it's far more concerned about Nvidia taking the entire bakery.
So, is AMD a buy? While many are debating Should You Buy AMD Stock After the Intel and Nvidia Deal?, the question itself is flawed. It depends on your timeline and your thesis. If you believe the PC gaming market is the primary driver of AMD’s value, the Steam data looks encouraging. But if you believe the future is in the data center, in AI, and in the strategic alliances that will define the next decade of computing, then the picture becomes far, far murkier.
The Market is Pricing in the War, Not the Battle
Let's be perfectly clear. The positive sentiment from the PC gaming community is real, but it's a rounding error in the grand scheme of institutional investment. The market is not ignoring AMD's CPU progress; it is correctly identifying it as a secondary plotline. The primary narrative for the entire semiconductor industry is artificial intelligence and the high-margin data center hardware that powers it. In that arena, AMD is a distant second. The recent stock slip isn't an anomaly; it's a rational repricing of risk now that its two biggest rivals are officially collaborating. The Steam survey is a lovely sentiment indicator, but sentiment doesn't generate the billions in free cash flow that Wall Street demands.