I ended up getting the 8350 and an MSI 990FXA-GD80. Before, with the Athlon II X2 250 OC'd @3.75ghz (this was the best OC for me as I could keep RAM speeds untouched and cpu voltage was safer as opposed to 3.9ghz) it finally started showing it's age with games like AC3, Hitman, and even BO2 multiplayer where I had to actually scale back visual settings to keep FPS playable (actually thought it was the video card's fault, but much of it was the aging budget CPU). BO2 also liked to PEG the chip HARD with constant 100% usage on BOTH cores which at the time I thought was a bug with the game. I like to play emulators and it really wasn't until playing PCSX2 (most recent revisions constantly) that some games could not maintain a SOLID 60 FPS which is crucial as sound, video, in-game, etc. MUST be at 60 or you'll get actual slow downs making the game unplayable, unlike PC games where you can play at 20 fps but it'll be jerky or laggy- but still playable.
After installing the drivers, I remembered seeing somewhere there were 2 hotfixes needed for the FX chips that increase performance as well as how it handles each core. After all that was said and done, I tried all the games mentioned above and got solid fps increases. The improvement was so good I was actually able to turn visual settings up well beyond what was possible before. It was interesting to see just how much of a role the CPU has with having a high frame rate as I thought it was more of an issue with the card. EVERY PCSX2 game that had issues with the 2 core chip was playing at 60 fps (or higher but it just makes the game speed to quick) with the 8350. Atv Offroad, Ratchet and Clank (any of them) Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, etc. were all 100 percent playable now, so I was very happy with that.
Trouble didn't start until I tried OCing. Apparently, MSI retroactively nerfed the cpu core voltage at 1.45 volts due to the board's ability to cook certain components. And there's no clear fix in site. Very angry with this. It's extremely misleading and false advertisement when they have the 8 ghz "World Record holder" plastered all over the page for the board. Reality check, 1.45v can barely get you a 4.5ghz 100% stable. I could get 4.8, play games with it, eyc. but Prime would crash as soon as it started, so not stable. 5ghz is a pipe dream with this board. Another rather big disappointment is you can NOT disable individual threads either. I wanted to try and run a true 4 core by disabling a thread from each core which was possible with my older MSI 760GM P-35 which allowed individual thread/core deactivation. This stupid board only lets you disable the entire core, meaning 4 & 5 are disabled at the same time, instead of just 5. If you want to "risk it", you can try flashing an earlier bios before the nerfing occurred, but they made so many updates since that one you run a risk of more problems or even bricking. If you could run as a true 4 core, I think a higher OC would be possible as it'd be lessing demanding on voltage as well as a bonus in heat reduction. BUY another board!
To the guy above talking about Intel and stuff like the i3 and claiming games don't use more than 2 cores. This 8350 destroys the i3. It's also able to do better at many games than i5 and even some i7's. Apparently the benchmarks are wrong as this plays everything I've thrown at it without an issue and at solid fps. It does an excellent job with the emulators allowing me to finally enjoy some games I haven't been able to play in 10-12 years. That old "2 cores can play any game because they don't use more than cores" simply isn't true anymore. With the PS4 using an 8 core, you're going to see games that will recognize how many cores you have and use many of them, especially as more visuals and background interactions are thrown on the screen.
I liken this AMD chip to a Ford Mustang GT500 and Intel i7 to a Ferrari, both have the HP and are fast, but one is priced better and even has room for the kids.
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