Well my main reason for PC gaming stems from my interest in computing. As someone doing a computing degree its essential i have a decent enough PC for heavy amounts of programming, which means my PC is also an extremely capable games machine.

Plus, being a student, money is a bit tight and games are generally £10-£20 cheaper on PC 

It makes much more sense as a student, especially if a TV is hard to come by and it makes sense to take advantage of a powerful PC. Of course, PC games can all be had for £5 if you are patient enough...

There is a slightly higher barrier to entry, but not really in terms of cost. You don't need to spend $1500 (and based on this, you could probably spend $500-600, but it does take a little bit of research on some tech review sites.

I find Toms Hardware quite useful as they do a monthly artcile on the best CPUs and GPUs at each price range with an approximate 'power-performance' tier table. Find a PC with a CPU and GPU near the top of that table and you're sorted. 

Too true. When are they actually due?

I'm a little disappointed that AMD is basically re-badging their 7-series. My 7870 still seems to pack quite a punch at the moment though.

My take:

For more money than a next gen console, you can have a PC that will either slightly underperform, compete, or slightly outperform a next gen console.

What was the point of this?

Try similar money, free online and cheaper games with the ability to upgrade if you wish it.

For more money (£20) you'll get superior performance, and unlike previous gens, given an extra year that £100 graphics card will be superior to console games. All of these results haven't even factored the Mantle API into the equation as no one is using it yet. That'll allow devs to code "closer to the metal" in a similar way to consoles.

So PC is actually a very attractive option for the rest of the gen. If it wasn't for Uncharted 4 I'd probably skip PS4 altogether... I still might considering I have to save money to pay for a Wedding.

If you already have the PC, upgrading to this card to get similar performance is far cheaper than getting a PS4 or Xbone.

You have access to the largest repository of information known to man-kind.
Today it is not so important to "know" something but in-fact more important to know "how to find" the information you need and one has to assume you have some form of basic understanding for accessing said repository otherwise you wouldn't be on this forum. :)

Buying a prebuilt is typically charged at a premium, there are big for-profit companies involved remember and they can't loss-lead on the hardware.

You don't need to spend $1500, or even $1000, if you have a budget in mind and a panel resolution, plenty of people on this forum can suggest you some hardware and places to buy it from too, then with some special Youtube voodoo magic it can guide you through the assembly process. :)

For sure! And considering there are roughly 100+ million Desktop PC's sold world wide each year... That's allot of potential gaming PC's, most people still do have a Desktop in their home right? Everyone I know does...

Similar? I don't think so. You'd be easily paying $650+ just to match most of what will be offered on the next gen consoles.

That depends on the PC you have. And overall, the payout is still higher because it's not like the money you spent on the your PC suddenly disappears just because you bought it before you bought the graphics card.

20nm Volume production began a couple weeks ago a month ahead of schedule. So GPUs shouldn't be too far off.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20140116220015_TSMC_Begins_Volume_Production_of_Chips_Using_20nm_Process_Technology.html

There were rumours that Nvidia were targetting Q1 (end of March) for Maxwell, but that seems a tad soon for 20nm on a massive scale so it might be a paper launch with low end 28nm 800 series parts and a few smaples of 20nm high end parts.