Yeah, regardless of whose chips are fastest, it's really fantastic how closely competitive they all are currently. You can pick Intel or AMD or Apple, and have a fantastic CPU (and likely a decent iGPU too) whichever one you choose.

Disposable CPU sockets aren't exactly great. I don't care whose chips are faster if I have to throw out my motherboard alongside my CPU if I want more performance.

After seeing the lifespan of AM4, and how cheap upgrading was, this is exactly why my next upgrade will be whatever fits in an AM5 socket.

The Ryzen 5 1600 is nearly 5 years old (Apr 2017), and the current 5600X is a little older than 1 year (Nov 2020). The 5800X refresh (X3D) is announced for Q2 2022.

Now that's still a matter of perspective. If you got an early low-end CPU like a 1600 or even a 1600AF (got mine Jan 2020) and can now upgrade to a more recent, more high-end CPU like e.g. a 5600X or even 5900X the jump is pretty nice - and you get to keep your old board+RAM. Depending on your future computational requirements that system could be useful for quite a while. If you jump on that 5000-series CPU coming from something like Ivy Bridge, you'll still be able to use the system for the same time, but you will only have used the MoBo+RAM for a single generation. In that case the total amount of usefulness you get for your money is less, and you might be better off waiting for the upcoming socket.

> it's really fantastic how closely competitive they all are currently

Which says basically that most of these gains are more likely to come from fabrication technology, not architecture.

Or that they all employ similarly effective techniques.

No it doesn't.