AMD FX 8350 / R9 270x

Depends on your FPS goals and monitor resolution. Almost any modern CPU and GPU combination can play any game at high settings, but not all will do it with the same FPS and some are better suited to higher or lower resolution. Some combinations might be good for 10FPS at 720P, while others are capable of 60FPS at 1440P.

When building a gaming computer, it's a good idea to analize the sort of games and conditions you like to play in, and match the CPU to your FPS goals in those games and conditions. The FX-8350 is capable of 60+FPS in games with low to moderate compute demands, but will choke with FPS minimums down around 30FPS or less in some cases when presented with compute intensive conditions in some games like MMOs.

Generally speaking, the FX-8350 is a poor value CPU for gaming, as it offers a lot of execution resources that are not arranged very well for existing real-time workloads. The FX-8350 is better suited as a budget workstation CPU, as it supports many enterprise class features like ECC memory and an IOMMU. If you'd like a CPU that will maintain higher FPS in compute intensive games, consider an i5-4690K instead.

The 270X can play any game at high settings, though but may or may not do so at your desired FPS goals or at your desired resolution. Whether or not this is a good GPU choice depends on these other factors. Given recent price cuts, the R9 290 can probably be shoehorned into that budget comfortably.

The FX-8350@4.6ghz should manage that set of FPS goals in 99% of conditions/games. The only time it would drip below 40FPS would be something like a WoW RAID or major town, though even overclocked haswells will dip to ~30-35FPS in those conditions (expect as low as 20-25FPS on the FX-8350).

An Athlon X4 860K @ 4.6GHZ could actually achieve similar results in gaming workloads. In fact, in many games it would do even a little better, while dissipating significantly less power. This would cut your PSU requirements down by maybe $20-40, and cut the cost of the heat-sink and fans to accommodate the overclock by about half, and cut the cost of the motherboard by $30 or more. You could then apply the savings towards an improved GPU, which would allow you to maintain those high settings (or better) in todays games and more future games without dipping below your FPS goals, and if possible, switch that to an Nvidia GPU to further improve FPS minimums in DX11 games. (The Nvidia drivers split the compute workload in DX11 titles up across multiple threads better, which can improve performance by up to ~20% in compute intensive games, which can help compensate for the lack of a stronger CPU like an i5.)

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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core OEM/Tray Processor ($82.94 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS9900MAX-R CPU Cooler ($43.06 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI A88XM GAMING Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Mushkin Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($82.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card ($348.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($44.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $827.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-01 23:59 EDT-0400

For $800, if you want an AMD CPU in your build, the above is better for gaming than the FX-8350+R9 270X. The CPU will be +/-15% the performance of the FX-8350 in gaming workloads when clocked the same, but the advantages of nvidias driver for DX11 games is really what will help bridge the gap between the 860K and a more expensive CPU. In fact, at 4.6ghz, the 860K running a DX11 game on an nvidia GPU, will perform as well or better than a more expensive locked i5 haswell paired with an AMD GPU in many cases.

When clocked the same, the FX-8350 doesn't begin to outperform the 860K until the workload can saturate 6 or more of its cores. Real-time workloads like games rarely present this way. As such, in the limited cases that they do, the performance advantage of the FX-8350 would be very narrow (never more than ~10-20%). In most games, which produce workloads that only scale to 3-4 cores, the 860K will actually pretty consistently be the stronger performer. Given the huge discrepancy in price, I would take the 860K for gaming long before the FX-8350.

FYI: I own an FX-8350, and know what it takes to run it at 4.6ghz and how it performs... if you'd like me to take a picture of the power meter on this thing running prime95 at 4.6ghz just let me know, you may be in for a shock.

I advise you to get an asus m5a99fx board. Also get a smaller psu like 650w and don't forget you wanna get low profile ram so you could get a cooler when possible

Reducing the size of the PSU for an overclocked FX-8350 may not be a good idea. Depending on the leakage characteristics of the chip in question and voltage required, 4.6ghz can have a peak power dissipation of over 300W at the CPU, and near 400W with VRM losses accounted for. To make matters worse, the AM3+ platform is inherently inefficient with its off-chip PCIE controllers in the old inefficiant chipset. An overclocked FX-8350 + overclocked R9 270X can easily have a peak power dissipation exceeding 700W with the rest of the system accounted for (fans, chipset, ram, drives, bridges, controllers, etc).

The Athlon X4 860K is actually comparable in many workloads to a sandy bridge i5.

Suk on that for a bit.

Technologically speaking, the FX-8350 is even older than Sandy Bridge. It was originally intended to compete with Intel GulfTown. Performance wise it is comparable to an i7-970 both in lightly and heavily threaded workloads. I find it ironic that your original build proposed is based on technology that was originally slated for early 2011, yet talk as if the performance of a 3 year old Sandy Bridge and AMDs current equivalent to that product is "Suk." Never-mind the fact that the Sandy Bridge i5 will run any real-time workload (gaming) better than a quad-module PileDriver CPU.

Here's a CPU benchmark of various CPUs strapped to flagship GPUs running BF4 multi-player: http://pclab.pl/art55318-3.html

Notice: the i5-2500K@3.3ghz achieves the same performance in this title as the FX-8350 at 4.0ghz running the nvidia driver/API, and it takes 4.7ghz for the PileDriver based chip to catch up to the stock clocked sandy bridge when running the AMD driver/API. Stock clocked Bridge/Haswell era i5's are running even heavily threaded modern games as well as overclocked quad module piledriver chips. This is why the 860K is the better value gaming CPU from AMD. The 860K's performance characteristics and MP scaling are more i5-like than BD/PD based chips. This is a move in the right direction for real-time workloads.

860K or FX 8320 (oc/ed to 4.5ghz) ?