I remember people saying that the lower clocks were just to keep the cores and cache under the original TDP limit and we would get the clock speed back with a simple overclock.
Now that that isn't happening, people are saying we don't need the clock speed anyway.
Whatever AMD does is great, and if it isn't, some will find a way to rationalize it as great anyway.
If the part performs well for the price, great. I am still running AMD in my newest rigs and the recent price cuts may get them another CPU purchase out of me.
However, I'm not going to spin bad news for them. Even if the vcache ends up being a net gain, the clock speed regression and and a lack of headroom shows that there are still engineering trade-offs with this new tech.