The AMD A8-3850 is nowhere near the performance of the i5-2500k when it comes to games. The A4/A6/A8 CPU core is basically the old Athlon 2 which is slower than the Phenom II core.
Roughly speaking, the Phenom II is competitive with Intel's older Core 2 Duo / Quad CPUs. A dual core Core i3 can easily beat a quad core Phenom II X4 955 in games.
Most games only use two cores. There are some games that can use three cores and based on an Anandtech review, it seems that games which can take advantage of 3 cores gets on average about 20% - 25% increase in performance. However, the jump in perfomance of games that can take advantage of 4 cores (there are only a few) vs. 3 cores is relatively small. I believe it was about a 5% - 6% increase in performance.
Not sure how many cores FSX can use, but I know it will not use all six in a Phenom X6. Therefore, at least two cores will be idling.
If you have the money, then build a gaming PC around the Core i5-2500k. The actual price difference between a Core i5-2500k buld and a Phenom II X6 should not be that great. I would think no more than $100 - $150 off the top of my head.
once again thx everyone for their input.
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