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AMD nabs 26 percent of server market

Intel's still losing ground to its rival, but it's hoping new chips can staunch the losses over the rest of the year.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
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Tom Krazit
2 min read
Advanced Micro Devices is still making strides in the server market at Intel's expense as the larger company waits to see if a new processor can reverse its slide.

AMD on Monday said it increased its share of the x86 server processor market to 25.9 percent, a number confirmed by Mercury Research's Dean McCarron, who tracks market share figures. Intel now holds 72.9 percent of the overall market for x86 processors, while AMD has 21.6 percent.

Intel's share decreased from 82.2 percent in the second quarter of 2005, while AMD's increased from 16.2 percent over the same period.

Via Technologies is the third player in the mix with 5.5 percent share during the second quarter of 2006, but that figure was inflated due to end-of-life shipments of the company's C3 processor and will likely fall over the rest of the year, McCarron said.

AMD has been picking away at Intel's server market share for several years based on the superior performance and power consumption of its Opteron processor. But Intel fired back last month with a new Xeon processor based on its Core microarchitecture that appears to be outperforming current Opteron processors on several tasks.

Intel is pinning its hopes of resurrecting its market share--and its stock price--on the new Core generation of processors. The company launched the Core 2 Duo for desktops and notebooks last week during an event at its headquarters, and systems based on the new chips will start appearing over the coming weeks.

CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.