That's exactly it slow (3), medium (5), fast (7), elite (Threadripper) If you don't want to spend more than USD$800 on the CPU alone, don't look at the elite/

That's exactly it slow (3), medium (5), fast (7), elite (Threadripper) If you don't want to spend more than USD$800 on the CPU alone, don't look at the elite/threadripper line. What is your budget? That is the first question you need to answer instead of trying to understand the entire line of chips, look at how much you have to spend, and then find the fastest one within the budget. It's useless to try to think about the entire line of CPU's when you will only buy 1 chip (unless you are representing Dell and need to buy thousands of chips)