There is a reason why when they do CPU tests they reduce the graphics quality settings to show the difference in the CPUs. But we also have reviews that show that in a number of games the CPU doesn't matter a great deal with realistic settings and resolution. But that does not apply to all games. This is one of the reason I like
http://gamegpu.ru because they are looking at individual games and the variation of both CPU and GPU in relation to that game. Alas I wish they did frame time and FCAT but its still an incredibly useful resource because it does show in the vast majority of games at realistic settings that different CPUs make a difference. In very few the 8350 is actually quicker than a 2600 say, but its not common. What I think is interesting from their results is the number of cases where a 3970X is actually quicker than everything else.
If we take the last 5 games they have reviewed in no cases does the 8350 outperform a 2500, it always performs worse at real (1080p very high quality) settings. What is more worrying however is that in some circumstances it cant even reach i3 performance. We could be talking the difference of 67 fps for a 2600k verses 43 fps for a 8350 like in the case of Far Cry Blood dragon or could be much much worse where the 8350 can literally produce half the frame rate. It even falls behind the Phenom II at times.
My issue with the 8350 is its very inconsistent. It produces pretty good performance in metro last light, and great performance in Crysis 3 but in other games its very variable, and sometimes it produces unplayable frame rates where even an i3 produces playable ones. In the vast majority of games an i5 has a noticeable improvement over the 8350, its only particular games where it does actually better or comparably. If you went through all their reviews from the last year I would expect to see performance differences from 20% reduction to 50% reduction in around 80% of games. Feel free to go through their data and prove that right or wrong, but that is my impression from reading the site for the last year.
My conclusion from looking at that data is that 8350's doesn't really make sense to most gamers. In the general sense the CPU has issues with games and is often the bottleneck and produces unplayable frame rates on a regular basis where an Intel CPU would not. Gamegpu.ru even shows us that 6 cores from Intel are regularly at the top of their charts. Some games can and do use more than 4 cores and having 6 real cores helps, but the 8350 often doesn't show the same improvement, presumably because its not quick enough on a critical single thread. A lot of games offload aspects of the game to other threads but are still largely dominated by the DirectX rendering thread, thus a slow single core despite 8 threads for the game as a whole is still the problem.
I would far rather pay a bit more to be sure a CPU will run all games well. Especially for a gamer who next week could be playing anything rather than knowing they will be playing BF3 single player or Crysis 3 single player. For anyone who plays a lot of games the 8350 regularly has performance problems and becomes the limitation on a decent GPU.