Well, on the portable I'm lost in Planescape:Torment, doing every sidequest in Sigil before advancing inthe main quest.
On the desktop I was lost in Morrowind sidequests, then, when I did my last upgrade I had to abandon Win 2000, due to lack of drivers, but with XP some DRM/copy protection, probably of Thief 3, managed to do far worse damages than under Win 2000, particularly to CD/DVD drivers (so that darn protection damaging the drivers couldn't see the DVD anymore and prevented me from playing), so after a while, playing Grand Prix Legends, but it was less stable too than on Win 2000, I finally switched to Win 7, but this time, to avoid problems, I'll finish Thief 3 using a DRM-free GOG version. For GPL I'll have to use a GPU-affinity tool, as it's so old that it doesn't cope well even with my modest dual-core.
With the new GPU I'll be able to play The Witcher 2, of which even the minimum specs exceeded my on board HD3300, but I'll play Gothic 2 and 3 first, then The Witcher 1, I don't want to feel like going back if I play The Witcher 1 and 2 first. In my backlog I got other games too, I got Mount&Blade, for example, that is tempting me, Mass Effect 1 and then a bunch of isometric RPGs, like Drakensang 1, 2 and expansion, Sacred 1 and 2 and Torchlight. Then I have a King Arthur collection that I don't even remember when I bought it, it had to be some special offer. I have some other racers too, like GTR and GT Legends, and rFactor 2 is in my wishlist.

But the problem is that I have no time! And when I'll finally graduate and have more time my gf wants to marry me or at least make children with me! If she won't get fed up of waiting and leave me before, that is. OMG, when I'll stop wasting time taking too long to do what I have to do, I'll end up having even less time, what kind of sick, f***ed-up universe do we live in?   

About my next PC, I still haven't decided anything in detail, except that I'll wait for low power consumption CPUs or APUs to offer a significant performance boost compared to my current PC. My new GPU will allow me to wait longer before my next major upgrade, as in my backlog The Witcher 2 is currently the most power-hungry game, this is good, because by then probably there will already be DDR4, and maybe even chipsets and mobos able to use GDDR5 also as main RAM like PS4 already does.

No not for you unless you like being able to stream any video file on your PC to say a PS3 or Sony Blu Ray player wirelessly and simply. I love that option, saves me from burning discs.

A full AMD system, yes!!

The optimal low cost solution is cool too. Did you build it by yourself or it was pre-built? For how long do you plan to keep it until you upgrade to something that will be able to handle upcoming "true" next gen games?

To be honest you could do that with Windows XP via TVersity, heck you could do it with Windows 2000.
In-fact I used to do that with the origional Xbox.

However, for HD content it requires a significant amount of processing time to pull off, not much of an issue for a decent PC.
I often Transcode on the fly to my Xbox 360, Playstation 3 (In fact, it's mostly used for that task and Blu-rays), phones, tablets, HTPC etc, sometimes all at the same time, having 12 threads on my CPU greatly helps in that regard though.

Windows 7 is probably the more preffered OS for allot of users, although Windows 8.1 is fantastic in terms of boot times and responsiveness, especially if you only have a mechanical drive, does require some re-learning however.

Cool. Have you completed it? I enjoyed it although I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece. The ending was a bif of a disappointment after all that work.

I'm gonna play lots more indie games like that thanks to Steam.

I built it myself. If the xbox one is next gen so is my PC, considering I have a huge advantage in cpu performance, slightly more gpu power and more memory too.

Dare I suggest I think this will probably last me 3 years. I have two PC's and currently my other PC is the second PC (dual core intel PC ) so that one will get upgraded next and this AMD pc will become the second PC.

Obviously if a game comes along that specifically needs 8 cpu cores and more graphics memory that I desperately want to play on PC then I may be pushed to upgrade. I doubt 8 cpu cores will be the minimum spec for sometime though and my quadcore 4ghz cpu will manage.

Currently out of about 150 games I own on steam, 100% play perfectly with perhaps 10% needing to drop max detail level for 2D gaming and perhaps 20% for 3D gaming. I have about 5 on origin and 2 or 3 on uplay that have similar performance statistics.

Everytime I play Skyrim I'm amazed at how beautiful it looks on such a humble PC and I'm running a lot of mods too that slow the game down. To be honest I'd be happy to take it down to 720p if I had to although currently 1080p. The viewing distance to my 42" screen means I use a 720p mode for web browsing etc and I can't really tell the difference between 720p and 1080p gaming anyway. That said I may re-arrange my living room so I'm closer to the screen at some point.

Yeah, it will take eons before we see 8 cores as minimum specs.

But 3 years is a bit optimistic. Although it totally depends on what demands on quality you have. To be honest I am still fine with gaming on my old Radeon 4850, which will end up on my secondary comp.

Yes I'm not sure at what level my PC will be performing in 3 years. I will probably be forced to 720p and upscaling with detail settings low on the latest games but it probably will manage ok I bet.

I think my older pc lasted  5 years with a graphics card update half way through its life. It still runs the majority of games. Games like Skyrim are acceptable on it.

For the next few years I'm more interested in getting a ps4 and perhaps a xbone.