That sounds about right. Gaming wise it's nothing to be concerned about. It would be something to consider for long encoding sessions though, 100w extra on an overnight encode is eventually going to cost a fair bit.
Its more efficient than a Phenom II X4 or Phenom II X6 at encoding AFAIK and TBH,most people are not encoding 24/7 anyway.
Even if say you did 100 hours of encoding a month, which is a lot for the average person,you are looking at under £1.50 a calendar month using the average UK electricity price:
http://www.sust-it.net/energy-calculator.php
The FX8350 is also faster than a Core i5 3570K for video encoding in many cases.
Even with gaming,if you played 4 hours a weekday,and 8 hours each day in the weekend(which is big amount if you have a job),that is 36 hours a week.
Assuming that you never go on holiday,that is under £14 a year if the AMD rig is consuming 50W more for gaming.
However,the problem is that you can save upto 20W under load by changing the motherboard in a AMD or Intel system,ie,use one which has a more efficient VRM section.
On top of this even something like a monitor can also easily add 40W to 50W to the system power draw,if you use a less efficient monitor. A Platinum rated PSU can also reduce power consumption by 10W to 20W too.
Even switching off your PC when not in use will still save you money,instead of keeping it on in use.
Then the graphics card too. Most people are more worried about what kind of PSU they need.
Look at how popular the GTX460 was even when compared to the HD6850?? The HD6850 consumed less power but it did not factor into the purchasing decision of many people.
The same goes with people going with a HD7950 over a GTX660TI.
Moreover overclocking will increase the power consumption of your CPU and graphics card.
The thing is people obsess about CPU power consumption when the other parts also contribute to power consumption as well as your usage habits. However,it seems only CPUs seemed to be focussed on like some sort of OCD. You might think you are saving money in running costs,but you might find that in the end you really are not!!
I am interested in SFF PCs,so had to consider a lot of these factors for years now.
In the scheme of things the power consumption costs are not that massive TBH,and a bit extra is not going to bankrupt you, especially if you can afford to spend a decent amount on a gaming PC and spend loads on games.
The thing is though if electricity costs are a major problem it is better to get a games console and a laptop - they will probably end up consuming less power anyway.
More power used is also an indication of the extra cooling needed.
In a SFF PC,yes it is more important, but for the standard mATX and ATX systems,it should be no problem when running at stock clockspeeds.
The standard coolers for the AMD 125W TDP CPUs are not that bad TBH,unlike the CPU coolers they use for their 95W and 100W TDP CPUs which are pile of fail.
The thing is AMD also has kept compatability among their current platforms for CPU coolers. Even an AM2 cooler will fit on a AM3+ or FM2 motherboard.
I think overclocked, the cooling requirements are more severe than a IB or SB based CPU, but they should be around the same as a overclocked Phenom II X6 or socket 1366 Core i7.
It benefits ALL PC gamers, not just FX owners. 