Help with upgrade from Phenom II 965

[ByrdWhyrm]

I'm looking to upgrade my CPU from a phenom II 965 to another AM3+ CPU, and am trying to decide which is the best use of my money. I know the fx cpus underperform intel's processors in gaming applications, but I'm looking to spend around $150 dollars to get some extra life out of my current mobo/ram before upgrading in a year or two once I see what AMD's new processors look like. I'm currently thinking the fx 8350 is my best bet, but I don't know if the extra cores over the 4350 or 6350 make a huge difference, or if it's better to get one of the -300 processors and overclock it instead.

Here is my current setup:
Phenom II x4 965 @ 4.0 ghz
8gb gskill ram @1333 MHz
ASUS m5a97 motherboard
Zotac GTX 970

Edit: I'm planning to upgrade because my phenom II lacks SSE4.1 support, which is needed to play Dishonored 2. My processor had been contributing to slowdowns in games like the new Hitman and Deus Ex:MD anyway, so I'd been thinking about doing a minor CPU upgrade anyway to tide me over until my next major system overhaul.

 

[Ecky]

Even though some of an FX-8xxx's cores will likely be unused, FX cores are grouped in modules and if more than half of them are used there's a performance penalty, so the 8 core chips still outperform quads in things that use as few as 3 cores.

I expect an OC'd 8300 or 8320e will be your best value.