Apart from the very occasional bundle, I can't remember the last time we recommended a deal on a CPU. Monitors, yes. Gaming PCs, definitely. But not CPUs, because however well-priced they are, it's hard to recommend a system upgrade when buying the rest of the system needed to go along with it is so damn expensive. I'm not entirely surprised, then, that Mercury Research says that desktop CPU shipments from AMD and Intel "in the second quarter are best described as ugly."
According to the market research firm, this is the case despite growth in the overall CPU market:
"In spite of a decidedly gloomy outlook on client processors from the suppliers for the second quarter, actual results for both X86 and ARM CPUs were up strongly in the second quarter of 2026, with sequential quarterly growth of the total market exceeding 10 percent, far in excess of normal seasonal trends which call for a slight decline in the quarter."
English (US)