Just for reference, IBM tried to do that with the POWER6. Dropped out-of-order execution and (I think) neutered branch prediction, while jacking up the clock frequency. The result was a steaming pile of shit. Performance on our code cratered with respect to the POWER5, Core2, and Nehalem. I ended up having to add ifdef blocks to rewrite some significant algorithms in order to get the POWER6 to be comparable. IBM fixed it somewhat with the POWER6+, but wisely reversed course with the POWER7.