The thing is you want different stuff from the CPU arch up through the kernel for responsive interactive use than for compiling a big Rust program. Apple have fucking killed it on the former, and Intel’s Gracemont stuff has made a kickass machine for the latter cost 1000 bucks at Best Buy.
But I find myself using the i9-12000K way more often. It clocks to 5-ish GHz on 8 Gracemont cores without making much if any noise, and DDR5 makes a shockingly big difference. And it’s “build a box with Best Buy parts for 1-2 thousand bucks” cheap.
Zen4 is supposed to be a monster and I’m kinda waiting to see how that looks, but I’m always looking for a bargain: does AMD sell a “gaming” chip competitive with the Alder Lake stuff?
The Ryzen 7 5800x3d trades blows with Intel's top chip, with many games benefiting enormously from its monster 96mb L3 cache. It will be superseded by the upcoming Zen4 chips, but the nice thing about the 5800x3d is that it's a drop in upgrade for most AM4 motherboards.
Having the whole slab of TSMC’s best new process locked-in until the heat death of the universe doesn’t hurt.
Samsung S22 Ultra (2022): GeekBench 5 single core: 934, multi-core: 2925
iPhone 13 (2022): GeekBench 5 single core: 1706, multi-core: 4661
That's not just TSMC's best process node. Oh, and the CPU of the S22 Ultra is made on Samsung's 4nm process.
Having the best transistors always doesnt hurt.