I am talking about the decision to discontinue the A8-7700k and replace it with something slower in the form of the A8-7650k. The 7650k will hit the streets in just a couple of days (Feb 20) and will be priced a little above the $100 mark. It will feature a clock speed of 3.3-2.9GHz on the four Steamroller cores, 4MB of L2 cache and an R7 graphics engine with 384 stream processors. You also get dual-channel DDR3 support along with an unlocked multiplier.
As we mentioned this new CPU will not be as fast as the older A8-7700 which is what make the move unusual. There are some that are assuming that AMD went with a “slower” product so that people would feel better when they got higher clock speeds. I can remember many motherboard makers doing that with their BIOSes. To get high FSB (yes that long ago) speeds they would loosen the timings and skew on memory. This meant you could get high clocks, but the performance was not there.
We are hoping that AMD did not go this route, but I honestly would not put it past them at this point. Sadly it is just another step on the path to obscurity and potential buyout for the once great CPU maker.
