So after three months of babysitting, mowing lawns, and working...

I have a similar setup and it feels great to finally make use of your work money (just like I'm doing)  

Instead of the 6870, Try the GTX 560 for the same exact price:
MSI N560GTX-TI Twin Frozr II/OC GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

It beats the 6870 especially at 1650x1080 and it's also supposed to run cooler.
Look through some of the benchmarks here: http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-560-ti-review...

Looks nice, I'll pick one up.  

If Microcenter is an option:

Items off Egg $456


965BE + Biostar A780L3G $160
http://www.microcenter.com/specials/promotions/AMDbundl...
u want bells/whistles of USB/SATA 3.0 then $40 top up nabs ya the bundle with MSI 870A-G54

$616 in total
edit: EA500 price went up so for more headroom for bigger better GPUs later
Antec ECO 620 $50AR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

hmm for 1680 x 1050 peeps are doing fine on a HD 5770 so if u think GTX 560 is overkill find a nicely priced 6850

With your monitor resolution and gaming preferences - Both not extremely demanding, a GTX 460 - 768mb version, for $120 (Less than half the price of the GTX 560) will give you over well over 100 fps in all your games max settings and save you a lotta money.

That HD 5470 (The mobility version for laptops) gives me 350+ fps on max settings on my gaming MMO's etc... but being a laptop, lower resolution.

That GTX 460 would give me over 2000 on a full HD monitor.

There's a reason why the 'old' GTX '4' series is still selling - Planned obsolescence means that they are a lot cheaper and they can sell at their price point and perform 'almost' as well - Especially since at your resolution, that card is around 73% rather than 69%.

From what I've read, the 560 is a high power drawing card, and I'm better off with the 6870 at my resolution...