Thanks for the info guys. I have been looking at the P8P67 Deluxe board from Asus, read some reviews, seems to be fine and fits under my budget. I originally planned on getting the i5 2500k, but realized that for futureproofing, I should get the i7.
@Silverlight - So true, that was one of the reasons I considered the i7 over the i5. The GTX570 unfortunately, only has 1.25GB's of memory, not really on par with the 2GB on the 6970. In terms of a dual card set-up, the AMD 6970 seems to do better than the GTX570, the scaling appears to be better and it seems there aren't driver issues or bottlenecks. Although the 6970 is a little over my budget.
