What kind of workload do you have that isn't yet optimized for a lot of cores but does need a ton of PCIE lanes/extreme memory capacities?
Pretty much any interactive "professional" workload has some kind of sweet-spot where more (slower) cores are outperformed by fewer faster cores etc. This includes development, CAD, 3D-modelling, graphics and multimedia. The workloads that do scale are async workloads, usually large batch workloads that are not interactive, like large simulations, build jobs, video transcoding etc. And what do all of these have in common? The end user usually don't sit and watch it happen, and if it's big enough the user will offload this to some kind of server. It is unfortunate that "workstation" benchmarks focus on these big (often synthetic) batch workloads which doesn't accurately represent workstation use.
In reality, the typical workstation user switches between multiple medium to heavy workloads that are mostly interactive. Responsiveness, productivity and stability is key, so balancing many aspects incl. core speed, core count, CPU performance consistency, storage IO, GPU performance, and memory bandwidth and capacity all may play a role.
Especially for "prosumers" who combine "work" and play, the old HEDT systems was excellent; flexibility, expandability and very consistent performance. Nowadays pretty much any heavy workload will benefit 2-4 high performance SSDs (1 OS, and however many for workloads, VMs, etc.), and running those through the chipset will result in terrible performance. Not to mention this will be competing for bandwidth with network, USB and SATA devices too, so there's not much use in PCIe gen 5 devices then.
If you want anything beyond a very basic setup for gaming or light office use, you'll have to do serious compromises. And with expensive "top" mainstream motherboards for both AMD and Intel being more limited than before, you'll have to live with your choice of limitations, or keep upgrading all the time. Unfortunately the mainstream platforms are becoming "increasingly useless" by trying to be a Jack of all trades, basically threading into "HEDT territory" with slightly more IO and cores, and especially pricing, but with heavy throttling/inconsistent performance and severe limitations. I'm
not arguing that everyone needs a "HEDT" system, just like not everyone
needs a pickup and a chainsaw, but carving out a proper HEDT segment again and moving the high-power CPUs there and let them have some breathing room would be great for everyone so the mainstream can be cheaper for gamers and basic office use.
It would be great to see this generation of 12 cores and 24 threads reach a maximum clock speed of 6.0 GHz. The previous generation was 1.2 GHz slower (7945wx to 5945WX), so let's hope they achieve the 6.0 GHz mark.
The AM5 CPUs will probably be a good indicator of what kind of clock ranges to expect, but I hope they do better cherry-picking and manage to push them a little further. Nevertheless, the higher TDP headroom and easier cooling will at the very least mean less throttling, so don't get too fixated on specs alone.
But keep in mind you're talking about Threadripper
PRO though, the much more expensive siblings in the Threadripper family with 8 channels of memory and 128 PCIe lanes. It's kind of strange that the regular Threadripper (4 channel, 48+24 PCIe lanes) starts at 24 cores, yet the PRO offers 12 and 16 core variants. If there is a professional demand for all that IO on mere 12 and 16 cores, there should be no reason not to offer those for the regular Threadrippers too (or better yet 8 cores too).
To make things worse, Threadripper PRO isn't widely available, and have usually been very late to market.
