Alright fully operational, I think.

I had to go back and wipe out and reinstall mac os after trying to change the refresh rate- no amount of graphics mode command lines on boot caused it to do anything other than go static booting without -x. Later on I will create a separate booter on a USB or something and try to see if I can get 120hz, but for now 60hz is fine. It works!

So, I can give you my steps.

1)downloaded and burned empire efi
2)booted to SL retail dvd with empire efi (GraphicsEnabler=Y PciRoot=0) and installed (only making sure to not select printer option)
3)booted to HD with empire efi (GraphicsEnabler=Y PciRoot=0)
4)used apple update to get combo 10.6.3 update and installed it
5)rebooted again with empire efi to HD (GraphicsEnabler=Y PciRoot=0)
6)ran myhack installer, choosing sensible options, leaving graphics enabler checked, afterwards updating the com apple boot list to include PciRoot=0 as it booted with PciRoot=1 and failed to give me video, and set "Graphics Mode"="1680x1050x32" (defaults 1024x768)
7)configured kexts with kext utility, added extra kexts from this forum first page, and VoodooHDA kext from this forum 2nd page. FakeSMC from netkas' site.
8)Ran osx86 tools just in case to repair permissions and touch extensions folder. Yay GUI!
8)booted from HD adding nothing to command line, everything seems to be working fine!!!

graphics are detected and seem to work 100% (other than I'm not sure about the refresh rate, I'm scared to try to change it). Any idea how I can test to see if it's working well or just working? any program suggestions with benchmarks I can relate to? I didn't use an EFI string as graphics enabler states that with option Y it will do its best to make up a good EFI string to use... so until I find a better option I'm using it. System profiler sees it as a gtx260 so...

USB is working, it even auto-detected drivers for my logitech pro 9000 that I forgot was still plugged in during install, firewire is active, ethernet is active, I don't have a wireless adapter so it's just a cable (idk if it is working in gigabit capacity like it could though, but that's not a big deal), audio is working in stereo with the voodoohda kext, the smc makes it think I am running a mac pro with a Xeon processor instead of an i7 but reads the clock speed right...

The only things I can't seem to make sense of are that the system profiler shows the ram as being DDR2 when it is DDR3, and it shows the i7 as having 4 cores (which I guess technically it does, but it should be able to use hyperthreading to show 8 cores?).

Thanks for the easy extensions list, i986123, and thanks intelimacpro for the empire efi tip... saved me from hours of pulling my hair out.