yes but with a dual core Phenom II it's probably not that important, also we have no idea about what PSU/case/motherboard he is using, an old high end card like the 6970 could mean PSU/cooling problems, and some sata ports blocked,
Cooling isn't going to be a problem. This is one of the coolest cards ever made.
Also, happens to be ridiculously quiet at stock.
Total system power consumption with the super power hungry i7 920 @ 4.0Ghz is below 335W
Source
Therefore, with his dinky AMD CPU, a solid 350-400W PSU is more than enough (Antec, XFX, Sparkle, Fortron, etc.)
Performance is nearly
2X faster than a GTX650 or 7770:
In 3 years you can easily sell it to someone for $30, making your total cost of ownership $38. :wub:
Believe me, I would recommend a more budget card if I could find a deal but I can't at the moment as the next best budget card deal expired:
http://slickdeals.net/f/7535032-msi-geforce-gtx-650-ti-video-card-45-ar
I totally realize that he'll be CPU limited but he'll also heavily GPU limited too. I can't recommend a 1GB card $70-80 card when so many games are using 2GB for medium settings and 6970 @ $68 provides
90% of the performance of an R9 270
X/7870. You guys have to realize that while his CPU won't be getting him 80-100 fps as an i7 4790K, when we are talking about latest titles, a 7870 barely gets 30 fps so you'll be primarily GPU limited.
Obviously in some games he'll be crazy CPU limited. Perhaps he can find a cheap CPU drop-in upgrade too. This is one of those unfortunate cases with an X2 550 where you are nearly always either CPU or GPU limited or both.