dont really matter.

If you wanna fight about it have at it.
I will tell you right now that for the price it performs exactly the same, just can handle a much much larger load.
And if you are running windows 8 CME like I am... i5/7 dont hold much for the price difference.

And yes, graphics card is much more important than the CPU right now.
An AMD Fx 4100 / 4170 will run BF3 on any setting (I know... I have used both) as long as they are paired with a good GPU.
Things start going iffy here...

The FX series will bottleneck the GPU if you are spending 4-600$ on them, but for the mid-level stuff they are great and extremely cheap.

---------- Post added at 05:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:42 PM ----------

And for graphics... 7770 is a solid card, and runs bf3 on MEDIUM around 27 FPS Average (Can go up or down, but its smooth)
The 7870 would be a really nice card here, around 300$ (Bit high for a budget) and its up on top, semi-highended.