Thinking about dropping FX8350 for an Intel chip

I'm not satisfied with the performance of the 8350. Overclocking doesn't really make much of a difference provided you can get a stable OC beyond 4.2, The eight core setup is not great since not many games use more than four. I'd rather have four powerful cores than eight average cores. Furthermore, I feel the 8350 is throttling the performance of my R9 290 and it would do so much better with a 4820.

My biggest peeve so far is the necessity to swap out my mobo for a new one. I put in a cheap AM3 board so it's not a great loss since I can put in a better quality one this time. I'd still need to replace it even if I wait for the Zen chips, same difference. I also don't expect Zen chips to surpass any of the current Intel offerings. Come close maybe but surpass them? Nah.

I don't plan on changing anything until fall-winter when better deals will be available so I'm just brainstorming right now.

Switch to i5 and you'll gain 20% boost in performance.

I'd say wait it out, Direct x 12 will allow AMD FX 6/8's perform as good as any current intel cpu with any single gpu. There is a chance some upcoming and current games to to see patch for DX12 later on this year. But we should see games in 2016 to be DX12 ready. That FX 8350 only holding back that 290, when your playing poorly coded games, or games that only use 1-4 cores/threads, games that are coded correctly to make use of 6+ threads that FX 8350 is only around 10% slower then quad core i5/i7's.

I agree with @04dcarraher; I'd say to wait it out. I have a similar setup: an AMD Phenom II x6 1055T from 2010. Overclocked from 2.8GHz to 3.8GHz, the performance still drops a bit in current games, but it's usually a result of my GTX 660 bottlenecking. Even though the 660 is far less powerful than your 290, my framerates rarely drop below 30fps all settings maxed (w/ 2-4x AA) at 1680x1050 on any game. As 04dcarraher said, DX12 looks to *really* improve threaded performance, which will be making use of those other 4 cores on that 8350. I'm anticipating a bit of an improvement for myself so that I can hold off upgrading for even longer. :P The only thing I hope I have to upgrade anytime soon is the gpu again.

I'm also running out the clock on my FX-8350 before moving back to Intel. But, I decided to wait it out and see what DX12 has to offer.