I have been seeing rumours lately pointing towards AMD stopping production of FX processors, and that the Steamroller architecture will not be making an appearance in any FX CPUs this year, if ever. I personally think that AMD is making an enormous mistake, that the FX processors are underrated and are NEEDED in today's market, and here's my reasoning.
-Intel currently offers nothing that can compete with AMD in the low-to-mid range market for gaming CPUs, other than power consumption being an issue for some. The ~$110 FX-6300, which I personally own, can out perform ANY Intel CPU at a similar price point, and with a good cooler, can start to compete with some i5 Processors. This is amazing, but the i5 would of course be running at stock speeds and could be overclocked to easily outperform the FX once more. But consider this: with a Noctua NH-D14, an air cooler I've seen go as low as $65 USD after rebates, can overclock an FX 6300 past 4.5GHz, which gives you i5 4670K performance (a little less, but extremely close) for a price of roughly $180. The 4670K is usually around $220, and to get almost the same performance is amazing. If you still want more performance, the i5 is still what you would want to buy, but if you want the performance that the 4670K offers at stock speeds, just OC an FX 6300 and save money. Honestly, the power consumption isn't as bad as people make it seem, just make sure you don't have a crappy PSU. AMD is underrated.
-Pricing. Similar to my last reason, AMD offers much cheaper CPUs. The cores are weaker, and some people say the parts are lower quality, but they work and they work fine. For much cheaper than what Intel will likely ever offer. AMD can give you an octa-core CPU for as low as $140 USD, whereas Intel doesn't even come close. The Intel will perform better in many cases, but an octa-core chip at budget pricing? many people just getting into video rendering or other things could buy from AMD, save some money, and get an amazing CPU for a cheap price. AMD dominates in pricing.
-More on pricing. If the FX CPUs go away, Intel will have no real competition, and pricing will be in their hands, and their hands ALONE. They can charge whatever they want for CPUs with AMD out of the way, because with no competition, Intel won't have any prices from other companies that they have to compete with. Did you think $120 was expensive for a dual core as it is? Intel could bump that price up to $200 with no more quad and hexa-core AMD's on the market. Intel will gain essentially a monopoly, and possibly ruining the market.
-Steamroller is much better than Piledriver, more power efficient and supports HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture), meaning that they can utilize multiple kinds of processors, to potentially increase performance of the chip by huge amounts. Bulldozer was a flop, coming from an AMD fan I will be very clear that I agree that Bulldozer sucked, and Piledriver was what Bulldozer should have been, but Steamroller is much better than both. With a more efficient chip, think of what would happen if AMD didn't change TDP's for new CPUs. Let's just say Steamroller is twice as efficient as Piledriver. (This is just hypothetically speaking, I do not know how much better it really is). If an FX-8350 could squeeze let's say 250FPS in Minecraft at Max Settings, using 125W. Then a Steamroller CPU could do the same with half of the power, seeing as it would be twice as efficient. If AMD kept TDP the same, however, and the successor to the 8350 also had a TDP of 125W, theoretically performance would double, and Minecraft could possibly see 500FPS at Max Settings. These are just hypothetical numbers, but keeping power consumption the same and using a more efficient architecture could squeeze a lot more performance out of the chip.
-More cores. This is a very debatable argument, but an AMD CPU will almost always have more cores than the Intel counterpart at the same price, which in a way is a form of future proofing. Whether you agree or not, more cores will eventually be used, and to spread the workload over more cores could seriously boost efficiency of the CPU. It's why the FX-6300, a hexa-core chip, can outperform Haswell i3's from Intel, which have two more powerful cores. Maybe not all 6 cores are being utilized, but more than 2 must be being used if the weaker cores can perform better than the Intel. It's future proofing in a way, and it's why I bought the FX-6300 and not an i3 like I originally planned to when I built my PC.
These are my reasons that AMD shouldn't stop producing FX CPUs, and incorporate Steamroller into the next gen FX lineup. Let's get something out of the way, I have nothing against Intel. I happily admit that they are better performers in many tasks, but I see the potential in AMD CPUs, and they aren't as bad as people say. (They actually work perfectly fine and some Intel's run much hotter). I will likely buy an Intel if AMD discontinues the FX lineup once I upgrade to get better rendering speed. Anyway, if you have anything to add, feel free.