Not walking anything back...but I got lost in the weeds with our conversation, when at the end of the day, I really needed to go back to the OP’s question and make sure I had answered it to my own satisfaction. I did.
I am all for CPU upgrades where it makes sense, but this is not one of them. I believe $200 can be allocated to something with a more substantive return based on the user’s stated requirements.
My opinion is that a 4-7% increase in processing speed is eclipsed by the increases in GPU speeds in the Vega 16/20 upgrades, which vary from 35%-80% (sometimes more) based on the user’s stated workflow, other user’s who have shared similar results, the problems the Core i9-8950HK in the 2018 MacBook Pro has with throttling due to the heat generated versus the Core i9-8850H OR instead the benefit of additional DRAM would have for video and Photoshop workflows OR how additional storage might be a better investment if the user is more mobile. The OP didn’t give a lot of background, so I inferred a bit of what might benefit them more and CPU was at the bottom of that list.
Your implication that I am not thinking about this the right way or that I don’t understand what you are talking about is incredibly condescending. I understand Marginal Opportunity Cost and even if I took the time to analyze my purchasing decision using it, my gut tells me that I can take that $200 CPU upgrade cost and use it for something with a bigger bang for my buck. Not everyone is thinking about this from a work investment perspective either and budget is a huge deal for most of us...I can get a faster, more capable computer in the 2019 iMac for about the same or less money depending on upgrades I add to it. The opportunity I give up is the ability to be mobile should my clients ask me to be or if I simply want to be. At the end of the day, MacBook Pros and laptops in general are pretty bad as a primary workstation for a whole host of things and cost more for less horsepower, relative to their desktop counterparts.
Marginal Opportunity Costs sounds like a fancy way of trying to replace common sense and experience. Perhaps it gives you tangible numbers to make a dispassionate decision, but I find these decisions are rarely dispassionate, oddly enough, given that a computer is simply a tool, much the same as a hammer or a drill. Just my 2¢.
