If money were no object, Xeon Platinum 8180m ($13k retail).
Money may not be an object, but choosing the first option seems a little stupid. Even rich people don't throw away money like that, because if they did, they probably wouldn't have gotten rich in the first place.
So the total performance (to first order) is almost twice as good for the 28 core part. Sure you need to use all cores for that comparison to hold, but usually software either scales up to 8 cores or less or it scales up to N cores.
A lot of "workstation" use is long stretches of interactive use on a few cores followed by periods of offline use (NN training, Graphical rendering, Code compilation/testing etc). The boost clocks on these higher end cpu's should really be able to go even higher, even if it means the base clocks would have to go down somewhat. I'd rather have a 28core CPU where it runs either 20 cores entirely OFF and the rest at 4.5Ghz, than one where it runs at 2.5-3.8Ghz.