Well, like the title states, I'm asking if anyone here thinks that AMD should offer a lower power FX CPU. With the FX-4300 at 3.8GHz base clock frequency and a 95W TDP, there's no way that I can see where AMD couldn't have an ~3GHz model at 65W that competes with the Pentiums by slaughtering them in threaded performance, even if while being slaughtered in single/dual-threaded performance in turn.
http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/14
Really, it looks like such a CPU which would probably perform around an A8-3850 in CPU performance and it wouldn't consume too much more power than the top Pentiums that it beats even in gaming simply because two cores without HTT really don't cut it in gaming these days. AMD could use such a CPU on the AM3+ socket to give a lower end option that has a good upgrade path because putting such a CPU on the FM2 socket simply isn't going to give as much upgrade room as AM3+.
http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/14
Really, it looks like such a CPU which would probably perform around an A8-3850 in CPU performance and it wouldn't consume too much more power than the top Pentiums that it beats even in gaming simply because two cores without HTT really don't cut it in gaming these days. AMD could use such a CPU on the AM3+ socket to give a lower end option that has a good upgrade path because putting such a CPU on the FM2 socket simply isn't going to give as much upgrade room as AM3+.