Variable: Pat Gelsinger referrer to Arrow Lake as a small die. Certainly some of that is due to the tile architecture but Intel could also have shortened the pipeline which would reduce clocks outside of the process/ transistor changes (while also improving latency).
Good analysis though. We probably won’t see higher clocks until later versions.
10700K to 15th gen or 7800X3D (for gaming) will both be good upgrades.
I tend to upgrade when I “need”. 2600K —> 8700K because VR performance was getting weak and Battlefield V couldn’t maintain 60 fps on the OC 2600K. 8700K —> 9900K because Microcenter had a $249 sale on 9900K, figured why not. 9900K —> Ryzen 7 7700X because I wanted new platform features, and I was getting back into flight simulation in VR, and I knew that the 7800X3D would plug in and work great (and it did). The 7700X was a large upgrade from the 9900K in some other games though too — Apex Legends, for example.
Before the 2600K I always had a rule of ‘can I get 3x the performance out of the new chip? If yes, then upgrade’. That was easy in earlier days - but now 3X performance takes a really long time.
What are cinebench and passmark scores with this config?