Well from the original post my question was really never answered. I didn't ask for whether or not you believe his (or my for that matter) current specs are sufficient, I asked for a build list. I appreciate wanting to save us money in that regard, but I still have repeatedly asked for a build list or approval of the build I put together. I disagree with your notion that a video card with a bad processor will run the total war games fine. I went from a 6850 to the gtx 780 I have now and for total war I did not see massive improvements. The games have historically not been well optimized for GPUs and instead focus more on CPUs. This information is all over the internet for Total war. I am going to hold off on the upgrade until I see how my rig handles it, but he on the other hand has problems with the current total wars and he wants to begin to build his rig for the future. To do that, he needed a build list with a new mobo, cpu, and ram.
I think this forum use to answer the question at hand a little better in the past, as I have used it to help me with my builds dating back to 2008.