Im in the same boat with a 3570k. I personally want double the single core performance from my cpu, which is about 400 in cpuz so im gona be after something near 800. Which is going to be either the new alderlake 12600 or im hoping that theres gona be a 3d cache version of a 5600 that might get to them numbers.
All games use 1 core heavy so single core is still a big factor for performance even if games can use multiple ones even with a semi even spread, a lot of monitoring tools looks like the data shows shared ultilization but a dev of egosoft says they arnt that accurate like afterburner or even task manager to show truely how 1 core will be used more than others and x4 from ego is multithreaded but it hammers 1 core in particular so im gona go single thread as the main benefit of a upgrade so yeah i want 800 or near in cpuz benchmark for ST performance.
Probs cost a bit more than say just upgrading to a 3600 or 5600 but if it lets me not upgrade for another 7 years as i bought this around 2013-14 ish then it would be worth it.
Personally im trying to hold off cos i absolutly hate building new pcs, i mean its not hard but i just hate wiring em all up, doing the cooler etc. Suppose thats why i have put off upgrading for so long and just tried to do gpu upgrades.
I mean personally i can play pretty much anything i have except x4 smoothly on stations. I dont buy a lot of aaa games like cod or bf so maybe my cpu aint great there but the games i specifically have are all fine. Thats another reason why i havent needed to really upgrade. And anything that did have a issue is usually a game issue due to engine used or just crap port.
Im also wondering if i went amd, then id probs should wait for am5 boards as am4 is end of life more or less now, yes u can buy a 5600 and get later on a 5800 or 5950 but they will always be expensive for a LONG time. Intel well they use new chipsets every few years so im also wary or that for a way to expand cpus if i get whatever platform the alderlakes are on for example, as knowing me i get a alderlake 12600 then in 6 years time the socket for new intel cpus would have changed and it be like a new mb cpu and probs ram combo all over again. And the higher cpus for that board might still be expensive all them years later, who knows.