Yeah 2 is the most balanced, but none of them are great. Ideally you want an i5 3570K with a GTX 670 or HD 7950 - or maybe a 660 Ti or 7870 if the other options are a bit too expensive.
I'd say 1 is better than 3 though. I wouldn't really recommending pairing a GTX 670 with an E8400 since the CPU is likely to bottleneck the 670.
670 or 7950 are not necessary if you only game at 1080 or less, so to say ideally you want... for all you know ideally he wants to throw money away with that advice