The R5 2600 is not only newer than my old i5 and faster, it also has a LOT more threads (12 vs 4) and an extra 2 full cores
Making it excellent for the multi threaded workloads (VMs) and leaving room for non-multithreaded optimized workloads
I have an RTSP client program running all the time displaying a handful of camera feeds. It had a ~45-55% average CPU usage even with GPU decoding/encoding enabled on it.
That same piece of software on my much newer 7600 changing absolutely nothing else software wise (I just dropped in the SSD from my old build) that same software barely cracks 5%
iCUE (for Corsair RGB control (yes I know there’s open source versions I just never got around to it lol)) had a similar story with ~30-40% before and barely 4% now
Gaming is one thing, a lot is GPU bound anyways, probably the same with “physical modeling”
But you cannot tell me your “data processing” would not be greatly sped up by using a newer proc (assuming it’s not also GPU bound). Does it work, sure, but if it takes you 2 hours for it to process now but <30 minutes on something newer that’s just a waste of time, resources and money. It’s incredibly inefficient.
On the flip side, if all your work is GPU bound no wonder a 3rd gen proc from 2012 is keeping up lol