Will my a10 7850k bottleneck a r9 270x?

No the a10 should be just fine with a r9 290

yes it will, in cpu-intensive games. but don't let that stop you from upgrading to the discreet gfx card. the igpu in a10 can't come close to an R9's.

Hmm title says r9 270x, your post says r9 290c (assuming you mean X)... The cpu will cause bottlenecks in CPU intensive games but otherwise should be fine for most games.

Hery R9 270x or R9 290?

It shouldn't bootle neck it but why would you have a GPU is you have an APU

The GPU will out perform the APU by a large amount, that would be my guess why he wants to get it.....

Yeah but then wouldnt you get a Fx core and a 7870ghz edition that would kill the APU

Well yea... but he already has the a10 7850k...

Simple. Maybe he wants to run at max settings, 60fps(2x AA) at 1080p, something that the APU won't handle

Absolutely not. Even AMD demo'd the 7850k pushing an R9-290 on a triple display and running Thief 4. If you run into a game that does hamper the performance, it's likely just because the games out-grew your system, which doesn't take long these days, since games are designed to push future hardware. Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 came out how long ago? And even today's high end hardware is benching these games and struggling to turn in a solid 60fps.

I run an AMD 7850k, OC'd to 4.2GHZ and it pushes my 6G R9 280X beautifully...even in the very CPU intense game Titanfall. I get a SOLID 60FPS with everything maxed and 4XEQ/ AF8X. Even my FX8150 system(prior to switching to small form factor) OC'd to 4.8GHZ and on water, experienced frame dips running the same game using with the same SSD, DDR3 2133MHZ and graphics card I am using now.

Look at the CPU comparisons. Google for FX8150 vs A10-7850K. They are virtually neck and neck, with the A10 leading in single core/ lightly threaded application performance. Even, when vs the FX 8350. Today, light thread performance is still what largely matters in games, since they are primarily still designed for dual and quad cores. They may still be CPU intensive, just not heavily threaded. Sure, throw the two CPU's in a thread intense situation, like video encoding and other means of encrypting/ decrypting and the FX wins hands down. Point being, with the majority of games the 7850k should theoretically be faster and or at the same level as an FX...which is another way of saying, "what would bottleneck a 7850k would bottleneck a comparable FX."

Another thing to consider, the A10-7850k has a native 2133mhz memory controller, which requires no overclocking to attain and is a big performance gain. I was never able to get more than 1902mhz, stable, out of my FX8150...some people are getting an easy 2400mzh out of the A10 7850k, overclocked.

There's a reason why the Steamroller is just being born and the FX is disappearing into the sunset. They say the FX9590 will be the last of its kind. It cannot remain competitive without clocking it it into the sun and virtually requiring it's own dedicated power supply to run. Meanwhile, the APU's in the PS4 and Xbox One are the result of AMD Fusion's and Opterons mated together and at 1.6GHZ operate at the equivalent of a 3GHZ processor...imagine OC'ng one of those!

You'll be fine, I run an MSI R9-280X 6GB with an A10-7850k and it is rockin...the only game I struggle with is the second level of Crysis 3, in the outdoor grassy area(Welcome To The Jungle). I've watched the CPU/ GPU loads in this particular scene and it is so CPU intense that my CPU is running maxed across all cores@4.2GHZ, and I get between 21-43fps...my GPU, meanwhile, is only at 53% load in this scene. I mean, there are hundreds of thousands(if not, millions) of blades of grass displaying and blowing in the wind at one time and are all 100% interactive. Everywhere else in the game, I get between 32-45fps and seldom any lower, with max settings...once in awhile, I'll get a drop to 27fps, but then it bounces back up and stays within the 40's, on Very High setting.

In a way, you are telling him that he will be bottlenecked by his APU. Your graphics cards is clearly doing more work than your CPU when you hit something CPU-intensive. As you mentioned, the CPU part of your APU is maxed across all cores.

Anecdotally, I will say that I have run across Starcraft scenarios when my CPU is slowing down keeping track of all the units on the screen (I get the onscreen performance warning). My graphics card has no problem with it. My partner, who has virtually the same system but with a faster CPU, doesn't slow down. However, I only hit these type of situations infrequently, and it takes a lot of stuff on & off the screen in order for it to happen.

So if you're going to upgrade, do both - upgrade the CPU & your graphics - ensure neither will be the bottleneck.

it will slightly on more cpu intensive games unless u oc my a10 7860k is running 4.4ghz and 1.46 voltage and benchmarks quite a bit better than a FX8350 8350 wsinglens on multithreading (barely) and loses no contest on single threaded applications best advice go 7850k u get pci 3.0 plus not a dead socket I run ac unity maxed cept for AA at FXAA at around 75-80 with a10 7850 @4.5 ghz 12gb ram @ 2133 r9 270x gpu clock at 1150 ram at 1400 mhz