Here is my contribution:
There are these different classes of CPU's:
1 - Few cores with low frequency -> cheap office computers (browser and office use)
2 - Few cores with higher frequency -> games, CAD/CAM/CAE
3 - Many cores with low frequency -> server (internet server or virtual machine server)
4 - Many cores with high frequency -> workstation or server
5 - Really great amount of cores with high frequency -> servers for heavy parallel processing/number crunching/video encoding/etc.
Price-wise, I would generically consider these rough prices (EU), just to get an idea of what we are talking about:
1 - 300-500 Euro
2 - 700-2.000 Euro
3 - 2.000-5.000 Euro
4 - 10.000-20.000 Euro
5 - 20.000-100.000 Euro
If you want to have some fun, try this configurator for a HP workstation:
https://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Offer.aspx?p=b-configure-your-workstationWe could do a cometition with who comes up with the most expensive configuration...
Some time ago I got a configuration with 30% discount offer. The final price was over 100.000 US$ (I used the US site). Not kidding!
So what computer should you buy?
I would consider these criterias:
1) What applications do you want to run?
2) How much money do you want to spend?
3) How much money do you make if you get the finished project sooner?
If you want a great gaming machine, just go for an Intel Core i7 or i9 (depending on your budget). You get enough cores for games and simultaneous browser, Outlook, etc., at highest clock speeds. You might opt for AMD, I generically don't like them (bad experience in the past with unstable machines and incompatible software).
If you want to do CAD/CAM/CAE work, then you MIGHT want to look at some Xeon based workstations offering more cores.
It depends on the application you want to use. Most CAD applications really don't make use of multiple cores, because the math behind surfaces and solids is not easy to split amongst different cores.
But there are exceptions and to name one, Fusion 360 does take multi core CPU to advantage to a certain degree.
CAM also uses multi core, though might be limited to a given number of cores. Autodesk PowerMILL for example uses up to 4 cores per session, but again Fusion 360 (or better HSM inside it) can use all cores, which is pretty amazing.
For finite elements simulation, depending on the software, all cores can be used, but providers often attach the number of cores used to the license model purchased.
But having many cores is always useful, as it allows to run many software instances. For example, my Chrome browser opens my 10 top favorite sites when I start it (this launches 10 separate Chrome processes). The I have Outlook open. Plus other applications. Windows does a reasonably great job in distributing the processes around the available cores.
So now you get stuck at the question: which is the best ration between number of cores and maximum frequency?
I think for power users, 8 logical cores (4 physical cores plus Hyperthreading) is perfectly OK, even for CAD/CAM/CAE applications.
A "simple" gamer might save some money on the CPU by buying an Intel Core i5 and spending it on a better graphics card.
I have in the past months developed a new addiction: multi core computing.
I started by buying the IBM X3650 M3 server, which can be upgraded to 288GB of memory and two Intel Xeon X5690 CPU's. This gives a total of 24 logical cores.
I have now three of them:
1x 80GB with 2x X3650 - 24 cores
1x 72GB with 2x X3670 - 24 cores
1x 48GB with 2x X5540 - 16 cores
Then I bought me a new computer, a second hand HP Z600 workstation. I upgraded it and now it has an nVidia GTX-960, 40GB RAM and 2x X5670 CPU (24 cores).
I can say that this PC rocks!
All 4 computers have cost me all together less than 1000 Euro. They are connected with 1GB LAN.
The Z600 is mainly for gaming and CAD/CAM, the servers for virtual machines and parallel computing. I developed my own software, that launches the tasks in parallel. This way I get around not having to split one task into multiple partial calculations, which is not feasible. But because I have many tasks to calculate, it is easy to distribute the tasks amongst the available cores.
While my Z600 is NOT significantly faster than my Intel Core i7 3770 on a single thread (perhaps even slightly slower), it will outperform on multithreaded tasks up to 300-400%. Even by just running several things in parallel the Z600 wins. Remember this computer cost me a total of 300 Euro with upgrades (CPU, RAM and GPU). Of course a brand new i9 Hexacore with GTX1080 or RTX2070 will be significantly faster, but at a cost of 10-15 times more money. And still it would probably lose in the Cinebench benchmark.
I got so fascinated with this, that I bought a second hand Delll R910 for the office. It has 4 Xeon CPU's, featuring a total of 80 logical cores (!) and 256GB RAM (you pay for a decent refurbished unit with 1 year waranty around 2.000 Euro).
This cannot be used for games (servers don't have propper GPU's nor can you fit a graphics card). But when it comes to parallel processing, this is a beast!
Again, running just a single task on a single core is SLOWER than an Intel Core i7 4770HQ.
I recommend you search Youtube for Cinebench benchmark. You will see what parallel processing can perform!
Regards,
Vitor