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8 or 12 Cores For FutureProof CPU?

As y'all may already know, 6 core consumer CPUs have been out since 2017 (FX Bulldozer doesn't count), and system requirements have risen over time. Before for a long time, 4 cores was enough to max anything out on PC, and then in the last say 5 years 4 cores became the minimum and 6 cores recommended. I've noticed in the last 1-2 years though that now it's 6 cores as minimum and 8 cores as recommended, but some new games like Borderlands 4 now lists 8 cores for both! Hell, I've been using 8 core CPUs for all my phones in the last near decade.

Clearly having a hexa core processor won't be viable for long, so obviously for a future PC I'm gonna skip that altogether. I currently have a quad core CPU as my gaming laptop is from 2019, and from previous post(s), I've indicated dying thermals, age of hardware, and OS overhead (24H2) has caused it to lose performance. Being the stubborn boi that I am, I'll just double down on my now potato until 2027 or 2028, even though I can literally build my own PC currently for about a grand. Due to the tariff wars, I'd rather save money and not waste it unless needed.

I know that octa core is gonna be good to have for the next few years, but since I like to multi-task and I'll be doing more than just gaming, I think 8 cores might not be enough. If I had the money to, of course I'd go for 16 cores or higher, although I don't atm and who knows if my laptop will suddenly die on me eh? So if that happens and I'm forced to "prematurely" transition to desktop, I'll have to choose either 8 or 12 cores. I've already set my sights on either the Ryzen 7 9700X or Ryzen 9 9900X as my top contendors. Won't consider Intel because Core 13th and 14th Gen have QC issues, and Core Ultra just sucks.

Now I'd go for probably something weaker like Ryzen 7 5800X3D or Ryzen 9 7900X to save money, but those are very old and even more so once I do go and build. Also while their multicore performance and efficiency are impressive, their single core performance isn't that much better than my CPU, the i5 9300H. I'd want to get a CPU that also has at least twice the single threaded power of mine, and sadly only Ryzen 9000 Series or Core Ultra Series can even achieve that (without overclocking). 10 cores are almost non-existent so I'm skipping that entirely lol.
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FrozenWasteland · 61-69, M Best Comment
I've had very good success with my 7900X so I'm staying with that family. There's a 9950X board sitting on my bench at the moment, awaiting a free hour or two. i need all the cores i can get without going crazy on the price. The 9950X was $350 off at my local computer store last week, which made it reasonable to go to 16 cores.
@FrozenWasteland well I've checked and synthetic benchmarks indicate the 7900X is only like up to ⅘ faster than my 9300H in single threaded performance. last i upgraded from a potato laptop with A10 9600P to current, I got like 3-4x boost in single core and 2-3x boost in multicore performance. now i get that CPUs have slowed down in single threaded potential, with multithreaded still making big gains so I'm not that upset.
FrozenWasteland · 61-69, M
@uikakarotuevegeta I expect single thread performance improvement with the 9950X over my 7900X to be modest. Benchmarks are confusing, claiming anywhere from 6% to 20% improvement. I'm leaning towards the low end, maybe 10%.

But where I expect real improvement is in (say) building a root filesystem for an embedded Linux project. Faster RAM, 32 threads running instead of 24, faster SDDs should (I hope) reduce build time by half an hour or more. If it doesn't catch fire. I'm going back to air cooling on this one after a couple of liquid cooler failures on the 7900X box, so we'll see how that works.
@FrozenWasteland so Ryzen 7000 Series doesn't support PCIE Gen 5? Because that's pretty much the bottleneck for NVME bandwidth, if 7000 only supports Gen 4. You only really need liquid cooling for the 3D variants because those use up a lot of power and get really hot; AMD even recommends it over air cooling for them.

If you're gonna set up a Linux server, why not just build a HEDT with ThreadRipper CPU instead? I wouldn't go for the Xeon stuff because they suck compared to ThreadRipper and Epyc. Yes, I know Xeon is technically for workstations and servers, but Intel did release some specifically for HEDTs after they abandoned the Core Extreme lineup.