you also have to keep in mind, the client that purchases cutting edge nodes first is apple. AMD only currently uses it for Zen 5c, and Qualcomm uses it for snapdragon elite/8 gen 4. mobile usally always gets them for efficiency reasons(and better yields due to smaller dies). other markets have historically been a node behind already (e.g despite the 9800x3d being new, its only a N4 die with a N6 io die)

early zen werent performant in lower core count loads, but were extremely competitive in multi core workloads, especially when performamce per dollar was added into the equation. even if one revisits heavy multi core workload benchmarks, they faired fairly well in it. its just at a consumer level, they werent up to snuff yet because in gaming, they were still stuck with developers optimizing for an 8 thread console, and for laptops amds presence was near non existant.