[jimbob21]

The 5950x costs $750, you can buy it on Amazon right now for that. Much less than 1k. Also, you're comparing single thread performance on only one website. In every website it kicks the M1 Pro's ass on multicore, as it should with 16 cores. https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-pro-vs-amd-ry... It can also beat it by a hair in single core depending on the benchmark.

Don't be disingenuous just to win the argument.

To actually prove your point, you need to look at GPUs. A 3070 is ~$1100, so there we go, already we've broken his $1600 budget, and we have bought none of the other parts (which would total at minimum ~$1000 more).

If you go 5900x plus 3070, you're pretty much right in line with M1 Pro, but it will cost you around $2500 to equal the Macbook pro. So an upcharge of $1000 to $1500 for the price of being a mobile workstation, as well as all the Mac software. Not really unreasonable.