To beat a console all you need is a quad core CPU made within the last 7 years.
8Gb of DDR3 Ram.
And the best GPU that you can afford.
Mantle is going to be supported by all the major game engines over the next few years, so my suggestion is to go with a Radeon 7950/R9 280/280X. (Or a Radeon 7870/270 if cash is tight.)
And because mantle will be reducing the draw cells, you will have lots of spare CPU cycles, AMD stated that with Mantle if you underclock an AMD FX to half the clock you don't loose any fps as the load has shifted off the CPU.
So with that in mind, get yourself a second hand Phenom 2 x4 or x6 system or find a second hand Second Gen/Nahelem based Core i5/i7 based PC, drop in a coolermaster Hyper 212+ CPU cooler, overclock the CPU to 3.6-4ghz, upgrade the Ram for a packet of smokes so you have 8Gb DDR3 and hunt around for a Radeon 7950 on sale/second hand.
Then you can enjoy superior gaming to the consoles.
Also something to keep in mind is that games are generally $10-$20 cheaper and usually you can get an extra 20-30% off that price at a minimum, even for launch games.
And you also get free online, so PC gaming is actually cheaper than console gaming in the long run, the money you would have paid for the online subscription can essentially buy you a new GPU every 3-4 years, which is about the length of time a high-end GPU starts to struggle. (Like the Radeon 5870's, which despite running EVERYTHING are only now starting to show their age after 4 years.)
On the flip side, do ignore the idiots saying that a PC can't match a Playstation 4 because the GPU doesn't have 8Gb of GDDR5 Ram, they really don't know how hardware and software works together.
For starters, the entire 8Gb of GDDR5 memory isn't available to games on the PS4 and a chunk of the left over memory has to be reserved for non-graphics duties for the game.
So that 8Gb is probably going to end up more like 3-4Gb for just plain old graphics, depending on the game of course, but it's certainly nothing a PC can't handle.
Personally, I have a high-end PC, more powerfull than four PS4's combined and I didn't need 32Gb of GDDR5 memory to achieve it and it's even 2 years old. (With the rebuild/upgrade finishing in January.)
--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--
