It is pretty crazy. I felt the same way. Individual x64 cores tend to be so much more powerful than other architectures, and now single chips will effectively have 128 logical cores.
For my purposes (large builds and rendering), I think RAM prices are holding back AMD here. To feed that many cores, you want really big RAM sticks. The CPUs have become a comparatively small cost compared to the RAM these days.
I've recently built a TR-based DL/ML workstation and bought 128GB ECC 2,667MHz UDIMMs for ~$1600, roughly the same price as 2990WX, but would have vastly preferred to get 256GB instead. Unfortunately, only Samsung is now sampling 32GB ECC DDR4 UDIMMs - I haven't seen them anywhere yet, and I expect the price is going to be insanely high :-(
Speaking of insanely high RAM prices, I just came across receipts for a PC I built in 1992. So 26 years ago, I paid $495 for 4MB. Yup, that's MB, not GB.
Admittedly these were AUD rather than USD. So maybe halve that for the USD cost.
When we complain about how expensive memory and compute, a slightly longer term view shows it's still pretty good value!
You realize that it's not about compared to 25 years ago though, right? When I looked at the beginning of this year, the same RAM size and speed was about twice as expensive as it was two years ago.
For my purposes (large builds and rendering), I think RAM prices are holding back AMD here. To feed that many cores, you want really big RAM sticks. The CPUs have become a comparatively small cost compared to the RAM these days.