Will this do what i need?

nnnhh...idk man...i hate to say it, but i'm not feelin it honestly. a 6850 just isn't a good pick right now IMO. the phenom ii X4, ok, i can go along with it at it's price point and when it's put in an AM3+ mobo, but not the 6850. yeah, black ops isn't terribly taxing on PCs, especially at 720p, but skyrim is, and you never know what games you'll want to play a year from now. a lot of games are very taxing, and will only become more so in the future. you've got to be ahead of the game when it comes to gaming PCs, at least a little bit. shoot for something like a 7870, trust me.

lol a 7870 is prob out of my budget. But i see where you are coming from. Any recommendations for a GPU less than $150? I'm coming from console so anything at medium+ settings is probably alot better than console.

at 720P, with a PII X4 965+6850, i'm taking a wild guess you'll see 40-50 fps in Skyrim, with the CPU being the factor for the performance difference as compared to what the chart's showing. not a huge setback, mind you.



EDIT:
if you can spend an extra $10 over your preferred GPU budget, there's a 6870 for $160, in case you miss out on the promo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

as for the rest of your questions;

1) decent enough for 720p. once you get a 1080p monitor though, you'll either need to tone down the settings or grab a better GPU

2)BO2 aside, it should play those games nicely. hopefully BO2 won't be too demanding a game

3)most likely yes

4)no. not for your budget.

Thats great! i was also planning on buying dirt 3 anyways so thats a bargain  .