Fx-8350 GPU limiting?

Well, there are a few things that I would like to discuss, but to answer you up-front: You should find the GPU that you want first, then balance the budget keeping the GPU in mind, and get the best CPU you can afford without sacrificing GPU power. Now, this would be bad pairing a GTX 780 Ti with an old Core 2 Duo at 2 GHz, but I think you understand what I am saying. Just to emphasize this again, even though you already know it, the GPU is much more important for gaming than the processor.

So, that being said, no, do not go with a 3570K/4670K/3770K/4770K if you need to downgrade your graphics card. An 8350 will not bottleneck any single GPU (except maybe the 780 Ti and a tiny, tiny bit the 780), and while it may hurt you if you do SLI 770's in the future, its not worth initially downgrading your GPU.

Now, I do have to say you're wrong on that bit on the CPU intensive games. Every single game you listed there besides Battlefield 4 would run better on an Intel chip. MMO's actually usually only use 2 cores, so the better single-threaded performance that Intel CPUs have would be better for 99% of MMO games. Same goes for Rome 2 and most other strategy games. Even Battlefield 4 doesn't perform "better" per say (will explain in a few, just bear with me).

While AMD processors perform pretty well in BF4, chips like the 4670K/3570K and 3770K/4770K will still outperform the 8350 in Battlefield 4. You might be confused at this, thinking all of the partnership DICE has had with AMD and they're hardware sponsors and that BF4 is made for multi-core CPUs and well threaded etc. etc. Well, while this is true, Windows itself is actually kind of the first issue, as it tries to minimize core usage and use less cores, therefore pushing more tasks on fewer cores rather than spreading it out. Unparking cores helps with this though, and I think it is a touch better on Windows 8. Also, even though BF4 is well-optimized for multi-core CPU's, it still uses 4 main processors for most of the work, then the other 4 are still used (if available on the CPU), but do not work as hard, if that makes any sense to you. Also, a lot of the AMD optimization went towards the GPU side of things, not as much CPU. In the end, Intel even beats AMD in Battlefield. HOWEVER: this is at a much higher price point, and those gains in performance might not be worth it to you whatsoever.

You're pretty much about most other games relying mostly on the GPU, although when there are large crowds in games that uses CPU power.

That overclocking comment depends on a lot of factors: The cooling used, the temperature of the room, the size of the power supply, the motherboard quality, etc. In a cold room with great water cooling and tons of radiators on the top tier motherboards, both chips can reach really high frequencies. However, this is probably not true for you and isn't true for most people, optimal conditions are almost never reached. It is true that the 8350 overclocks easier at first due to it's higher stock clock and such, but the 4670K can reach almost the same speeds with some effort put into it, although a lot of people run 8350's at 5.1 GHz day-to-day comfortably and have to back off of their Ivy Bridge(3570K etc.) (generally OC's even better than Haswell (4670K etc.)) aroung 4.7 to 4.8 GHz. So, in short, it may be easier to OC the 8350.


TL; DR Sorry for the massive post, but I really am trying to do the best I can to help you out! It may seem like I am trashing AMD here today, but in reality Intel chips very often do outperform AMD. However, I myself use an AMD processor, because their price-performance ration is leagues better than Intel's, and they work fine for gaming and the FX series overclock fantastically.

BOTTOM LINE: after looking at your situation, you do not want to cheap out on the GPU for a better CPU. Stick with the FX-8350, it is a great processor, especially considering price-performance.