Please copy and paste the link, I can't get it to work in this forum's formatting.
GHz and cores number are the tip of the iceberg in CPUs. A8-6600 is a Richland 32 nm chip with Piledriver cores, while the Athlon 860K is in a newer architecture it's a Kaveri 28 nm with Steamroller cores.
Even clocked at the same speed the new architecture cores were made to be more efficient. There are newer components, different IPC, and even sometimes trade-offs (e.g. overclockability).
I don't have hardware engineering knowledge so it's better to check in real world scenario based benchmarks. In those we can see how A10-7850 and Athlon 860K perform better.
The guru3d test was probably in the single-player campaign.
I think you can achieve your goal with High quality and even some Ultra settings if they're not CPU-bound ones. In multiplayer the higher the number of players the higher your CPU will be pushed.
860K will give you better FPS than the A8 APU. About the R9 290X I don't think any of the AMD processors available ATM can take it to its full potential, even AMD uses Intel i5 or i7 on their R9 290+ marketing pieces...
Of course the ammount of bottleneck on either side (CPU or GPU) will depend on whether the game relies more on GPU or CPU power...
You could look up more benchmarks considering 860K is somewhere in the middle of AMD FX 4300 < FX 6300.
AMD isn't really competing with CPUs in the high-end gaming segment right now... They compete on budget/mid gaming / cost benefit field. The GPUs are strong though and Mantle gives them an edge.
To get smoother performance than that it'll be impossible in a budget. You'd need a recent Intel i5 + motherboard (or AMD FX on AM3+ but while they may again win in cost/benefit they aren't really efficient in power usage x performance, old tech).
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