Threadripper puts them all to shame in multi core performance. Perhaps granite rapids or sierra forest might catch up.

14900k all p core max without custom cooling is likely 5.8 GHz. And the 14700k has a lower bin so I’d say unless you get extremely lucky in the silicon lottery, then no. But why do you need all-core boost of 6 GHz? Instead of that, set per-core turbo ratios. Some of the cores will boost to 6, 5.9, 5.8. Etc.

APO or not, Skip 14th gen as it is on a dead end platform, does not support thunderbolt 5, and contains no native pcie5.0 nvme direct cpu lanes.

am I alone in feeling that the space black is an abomination?

You don’t know that for all we know m3 will come with a big increase in single core perf. But even if it doesn’t, m2 prices will drop next week compared to their prices today.

How fast did you turn around?