macOS BigSur VM - optimizing VM performance

I have just setup a macOS BigSur VM. It is running on a Linux server using KVM virtualization.

VM Specs

4 cores assigned (from i5-8400) 12GB RAM vdisk on SSD

Geekbench 4 scores

Single core - 3861 Multi core - 13123

Geekbench 5 scores

Single core - 675 Multi core - 2752

As of right now I do not have GPU passed through to this VM (since I do not yet have one) but I am planning on buying likley an RX470/570 to passthrough and then using this VM as my daily desktop attached to 3x 1440p displays. I'm looking to improve the VM performance a bit. My goal is a Geekbench 5 score of nearly 1000 single core and just over 4000 multi core.

TLDR:

Is anyone running macOS on a VM with an i7-8700? What does your Geekbench 5 performance look like? I'm thinking of swapping the CPU in my server to the i7-8700 and am interested in seeing any testing before I make the swap.