Actually people who overclocked are probably better off.
Setting a manual vcore will likely be 1.4 V or lower. It's the auto boosting broken TVB/borked power settings combo taking chips above 1.5 V at high temperatures that caused degradation.
I had a terrible time manually overclocking or even underclocking any 13th or 14th Gen CPU even e-cores off.
Would pass all stress tests including OCCT, Prime95 Y Cruncher, Cinebench. Max temp like 85C and power like 220 watts no WHEAs nor errors nor crashes
Passed shader compilation in TLOU1 multiple times.
Then a week or 2 layer WHEA logged in HWINFO doing shader compilation.
Meaning stability random and not consistent or it degraded easily or who knows what??
Even had random CInebench app error even vcore auto and intel limits to PL1 and PL2 253 and current at 307A or something max. That was with a brand nerw 14700K and 14900K HT disabled all e-cores on then I threw in towel on 13th and 14th Gen.
There is something fundamentally wrong with these chips and the failures are coming to light and spreading all over the news.
Its very sad and shameful but its unfortunately true and reality.
Maximizing performance per area is definitely not an overrated concept. It's the most important design goal of any company. Ecores do just that, offer max performance for the die space they need. Replacing them with full pcores will just drop the mt performance of the chip at similar die sizes.
A 12pcore chip will barely be faster than a 13700k, that's a 2 year old chip. Now let's see how much that 12pcore chip will cost and then tell me how great it is.
Actually 13700K and rest of K variant RPL chips will be a 2.75 year old or even 3 year old chip if the Q3 2025 release is true. Remember RPL came out October 2022.
My 7800X3D didn't work with water, no matter what I did. There must be something with my AIO's cold plate, or I don't know. But as soon as I got an air cooler for it, I loved it.
My most recent positive examples are a 6500 XT which I adore for being a small and quiet GPU that sips power, perfect for older games, and an i7-11700 which is awesome for its configurability.
My most recent negative example is the Ryzen 5 3600 which I couldn't for the love of god keep from throttling in a low-profile SFF case. Like you said, it's not bad, just didn't do it for me.
To be honest, I've given up on Intel with Alder/Raptor Lake, but yet another P-core only monolithic design in the making got some long lost juices flowing in me.
I so badly wanted more than 8 cores on a single rinbus/CCX-CCD/tile for a while on a homogenous design with modern arch and IPC.
That way best set and forget it CPU for gaming no hybrid scheduling quirks no process Lasso nor APO. No cross CCX-CCD severe latency hit.
Last CPU to have that was Comet Lake with the 10850K and 10900K 10 all P core die. Though that us outdated arch in IPC being 40 to 50% behind Golden Cove and stuck on PCIe Gen 3 and DDR4.
So I am so excited for a 12 + 0 die Bartlett Lake and I was going to be a buyer.
However given stability and degradation issues Raptor Lake has, I am skeptical. My thought and hope is that they will fix it, however according to this not so sure:
So really hard pass for me despite me wanting such a chip and it being only option to come soon. Even Zen 6 sadly is gonna be 8 cores max per CCX-CCD as it is most cost effective for AMD on chiplets. Intel has more flexibility with monolithic design, but does not meet crap when their CPUs are unstable and degrading on current arch on 10nm wafer.
Unless intel makes Bartlett Lake 12 + 0 die Alder Lake based, hard pass.
I will just stick with AMD 8 core X3D chips. 8 cores is enough for gaming. Yes some games are starting to see benefits from more, but only marginally in almost all cases, and I really do not want a hybrid nor dual CCX-CCD chip.
So in such case I will hope Intel released a 12 P core Arrow Lake die or just deal with no such option for along while if ever.