"Total dog" for being 7-13% slower-per-thread but offering twice as many cores? This is ridiculous. I am typing this on a i5 Mac with 2C/4T and the difference in using common office applications (browser, Excel, etc) vs 4C/8T i7 is _insane_. Just using newegg.com is borderline impossible with just a few tabs open unless you have 4 non-SMT threads.
Desktop computing is actually pretty good at utilizing many cores these days: the booting process, starting non-trivial applications, using full-disk encryption, running multiple tabs in a browser (or just having a browser open with a few tabs + something else), in all of these conditions 4c/4t CPU will provide tangible, perceivable difference. 2c/4t CPUs are obsolete and I wouldn't recommend one even for an entry-level computer.