Geforce 5950 VS Saffire 1650 pro

I bought this saffire 1650 pro (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102073) for my buddie for cristmas becuase he cant play newer games like Bioshock becuase the 5950 does not have pixelshader 3.0. His system is an socket-a mobo,1 gig ddr-400 ram,athlon xp 3200+.

Now much of a performance increase could he expext from this card? he play's games like Neverwinter Nights2 and such.

Thanks for the interest.

Simple words, he should see a big boost, like a slap in the face from a jelly sandwich to a fish.

It won't be a huge jump but still better than what he has currently.

He's stuck on a dead bus anyway. The best you can do is get him a 2600xt or something

FX series was horrible.

Right but he's just a buddie not someone im willing to spent 100+ bucks on. With this card he will at least be ABLE to play all current games if he chooses too. The reason for me getting him this card is the 5950 has no support for pixel shader 3 so he's stuck playing old games. Now he can enjoy Bioshock and other titles even if they are on low or medium right?

he could probably play bioshock, but less than 30fps. not only is this game gpu hungry (not as much as crysis though), but it is also cpu hungry. while playing, my 3800+ x2 @2.3ghz runs 100% on both cores. I would say even if you buy him a new vid card, his cpu would bottleneck him on bioshock as well.

No, go for the 2600XT, much better card.