A graphics card that wouldn't bottleneck

Those are both fine ideas.

If he's playing at 1920x1080 resolution, I'd be comfortable going a bit beyond those and recommending anything up to a 560ti or 7850 (basically any $200 ish GPU or below). Some games will be bottlenecked of course (for example RTS games), but demanding ones like BF3 or Crysis 2 will make fine use of the extra GPU horsepower.

Can't make a recommendation without knowing what his monitor resolution is or the make and model of his power supply.

Read this article on best graphics cards for the money:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-car...

Bottleneck is not a good term. It implies that a graphics card can cause less performance.
What you are asking is at what point do I get diminishing returns for the incremental dollar.

The graphics card will not cause a bottleneck, regardless of how strong it is.
Stronger cards give you better average fps, higher minimum fps, and more eye candy.
Buy the strongest card your budget and psu will allow.
If your budget is $300, look at the newly launched GTX660ti.

Not sure how anyone could tell you if there would be a bottleneck, you haven't even told us the most important thing, your monitors resolution. Are we psychic?

Best answer selected by doreato.

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