I'm not sure you completely understand me here
I would not be surprised in any way if AMD is able to notch ahead here. The catch is :
Total IPC win. Ok, possible.
Total Clock Speed equal or win. Again, possible.
16C/32T variant on AMD. Again, possible.
Where it falls apart is IF all three of those come together, choosing to sell a 16C/32T capable of ~5Ghz @ $499. Just on pure common sense, it doesn't mesh with reality. Because that would mean that a MUCH smaller 8C/16T would be already capable of being far superior to the 9990k. Thus, if these 'leaks' were correct in all manner, then the pricing would perhaps undercut Intel at every level, but not to that degree. Extreme buyers (the 2080ti/Titan types) would happily eat up 16C/32T 5Ghz @ $999, or maybe cut them at a break and go $899.
Similarly, Intel has a ton of 2C and 4C items that sell widely to OEMs. Ryzen 2 '3' level products being 6C/12T to start seems like a waste, when a 2C/4T and 4C/8T offering @ 7nm with these types of gains would be massively effective at cutting Intel out of every price point yet maximizing sales. Now the argument against this may simply be timing, if 7nm capacity can't be sourced to run that many types of Zen 7nm yet, so they're focusing on larger chiplets to start, with smaller monodies to follow? Nearly impossible to say until we get more confirmation on the lineup.
Finally, how often have we seen gigantic leaps with a revision? Intel went from 32nm to 14nm on Core (Sandy to Coffee), and we didn't see that much movement in raw clock speed potential. Now that can be due to balancing pipelines for IPC and all other types of considerations, but the range between ~4 to 5+ seems particularly sticky. One could observe that the iGPU portion of these Intel gens kept growing in space, thus using up the potential improvements in core count/etc. Which I totally agree with in so many ways. The iGPU on Intel CPUs is pretty darned big in die space. But it doesn't seem to count much in relation to the cores that actually ARE on the SKUs. On the flip side, we've seen Vega 64 to Vega 7, 14nm to 7nm, nearly identical cores, very modest clock boost, yet it actually increased in power consumption. The performance gains seemed more closely tuned to the improved HBM and memory performance overall. And, how was such a thing priced? Right around its competition, more or less.
So you see, if the list had leaked with no mention of Ryzen 3 6C/12T, and no prices listed, I'd be much more trusting towards it. Applying business-sense logic to it with those things in consideration however, makes me look at it as probably fanfic.
As for planning things and simulating things, sure. But between the drawing board and final silicon, a lot happens. Sometimes entirely unforeseen situations arise, or things don't pan out as expected. Intel's own late 10nm is one example among so many. I doubt ATI was planning on the 2900XT being kinda bad. I doubt Nvidia planned on Geforce FX being a laughable meme. I doubt Intel thought Larrabee and Itanium were roads to nowhere. I know AMD didn't expect Phenom I to be basically uncompetitive AND late. I know Intel once expected P4/Netburst to continue to scale with clockspeed and die shrinks, but ran into disaster with Prescott and had to radically alter their roadmaps. Etc.
Much more common than these disasters are moderate improvements, more so now that process tech is slowing down in regards to silicon. "7nm" isn't even true "7nm" in the old ways of measurement either. It's mostly PR speak, even from Intel side of things 14nm is not uniformly 14nm, and there are a load of other factors that determine how well an IC is going to fare on a node.
Idk. I hope its great, and another legendary product. But I won't be surprised if it's just 'pretty good'.