Before the 7800X3D came around, that was the gaming CPU to recommend.
I was not impressed by the 7800X3D when it released because of the price. I'm sure a lot of people paired a 7800X3D with a midrange GPU, when in reality they would have been better off getting a cheaper CPU and a better graphics card.
For single threaded performance, it's not really worth the upgrade. But for multithreaded applications it's definitely a worthy upgrade compared to just overclocking.