Going by the "3x faster than Pi 3" claim it should be roughly on par with desktop CPUs from around 10 years ago (Core 2 Quad Q6600, Athlon II X4 600e) or the modern quad core Atom CPUs like say the x7-Z8750.
Rocking a Core2 duo 6600 for the past 11 years, so I'll let you know as that is what it will be replaced with. Been looking at a ARM solution for while, whilst the current 3b+ are good, the ram limitation and IO speeds as well as just short on some graphics grunt, did limit what they could do.
Whilst no SATA, the USB3 should be enough and the boost in memory alone, makes desktop replacement utterly viable.
But there are solutions out there with SATA and even PCIe slot(s), though support is a factor and with Raspberry, you have that support base that tips the balance. After all, having extra features with bugs compared to less extra features and solid support to deal with any bugs in a timely manner as well as a user base that can eyeball saturate an issue. Well, that's priceless as that will save you so much time, hassel and stress.
Geekbench puts the Q6600 and existing A72 SoCs (that are clocked a bit higher than the Pi 4) directly on par at ~1500 single core score but it would certainly be interesting to see some detailed real world benchmarking between them.
