This is true if you're doing heavy 3D rendering. For those of us doing anything from web to kernel development, it's almost certainly overkill.

I've been running years behind in hardware for over a decade; my workstation certainly isn't slow, but it doesn't take a lot to run Python interpreters and web servers; Eclipse is pretty heavy, but even a high-end dual core or low-end quad core with a couple gigs of RAM will handle it well.

Having more power than you need to work comfortably isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is in many cases pointless, and unless you're making money hand over fist or using your rig(s) for something else that's intensive (like high end gaming), it's an unnecessary expenditure that just doesn't make much sense. At some point all you're doing is hurting your own bottom line (and that of your company, if you have one).