Initial Alpha access restricted to 64 bit OS

i7-4770k for gaming and work? Sorry but those specs point rather to a machine running several virtual servers...

I have "only" i5 760 and it was and IS sufficient for running 5 virtual machines, 2 database servers, web server, several Visual Studio instances, few game servers, some BOINC apps and a game on top of all that.

Instead of investing into an overkill CPU I would rather suggest splitting some of the money into a more decent motherboard and a combination of an SSD and a high speed magnetic drive.

Also for the 32bit OS being limited in memory: there is something called PAE. It has been dropped in Windows XP days as drivers didn't work with it. However on Linux it worked quite well (or at least it did 3 years ago when I last tested it).

Put very simply a PAE (= Physical Address Extension) kernel allows a 32bit OS manage more than the theoretical limit of 4GB (of course the real number is lower than that) RAM.

Yes. Gaming, work and school. And some of the consideration is that I am considering leaving myself the option to go multi-GPU. There is some benefit to a faster CPU when doing that.

Anything past a Core i5-3570K is a total waste for gaming. In fact I would argue that a Core i5-3350P is more than enough CPU for 99% of the games out there. If you are not doing lots of things that are not games there is absolutely no reason to buy an i7. A Core i5-3570K will even do workstation tasks reasonably well.

The GTX 560 Ti is still a reasonably powerful video card and will probably last another year or two. I see no reason to replace it. Also, multi GPU setups are a waste. Buy a single upper mid range card every 2-3 years and be done with it. There is no reason at all to own a top end video card or a mutli GPU system. Today's games just don't need them. And since the graphical detail level in games has pretty much stopped advancing to do development costs tomorrow's games won't need a top end card or multiple cards either.

It's depends on your monitor resolution, you need more VRAM for 3840x1200 (dual monitor) or 2560x1600 (30" monitor). 1GB of VRAM isn't enough for most of current games in these resolutions.