Im trying to get more performance out of my my rig by crossfiring but i also want to future proof my rig as much as possible and I am thinking on upgrading my phenom 965 with a 8350. so what i guess im i asking is wether or not it is best to crossfire 7850's or upgrade my 965.
your cpu will bottle neck a cross-fire config, if you can, wait untill you can afford both, and go with that as the two will work better together
would it be a bottle neck even with an oc @ 4 ghz
Seeing as how your mobo is a 970, I would say that crossfire wouldn't be the best option (would only be able to run at x16 and x8). What i would suggest is upgrading your cpu now, and wait to upgrade your gpu until later on. With the next series of AMD card (rumored to be 9xxx series), prices will drop. The best bet would be to have a singular high end card with a 970 board.
Or wait for Steamroller.
He'd see little to no difference in performance from x16 to x8. In my 990fx (gigabyte ud5) I originally ran two 6870s each at x16. This brought my cards right next to each other causing them to run hot. So I dropped the bottom card one slot which made it run at x4 speed. There was absolutely no drop in performance so I left it that way. X8 would provide plenty of bandwidth
so would it be ok to CF the 7850's or should i upgrade my cpu
I think you'd see benefit from both upgrades. I think going crossfire would benefit you the most so I'd do that before a CPU upgrade. But you will find that the CPU will be a bottleneck in many games so after adding another 7870 a CPU upgrade should be done as soon as you can afford it. My point was that your motherboard is just fine for crossfire
your missing the point, if you get a newer cpu and mobo you will have a better overal exprance