No reason why not Sam, you can put a 7970 in a M17x3 or M17x2By the same token, I think next years ones will be on the sandybridge chipset too, so when your putting your GPU in, price of 3820's or 39xx will have dropped to a reasonable level too to give a nice boost.
Usually about 5 days bud.
Cheers for your help mate, probably the route i will go down unless we can get the same kind of deals on the outlet and then ill probably just buy another

One last question, im really tempted to flash the GPU however im a little worried i may do damage. Do you think it will affect the lifespan?.
I would also really appreciate a bit of help with the process if you dont mind

