Why worry about a bottleneck? It's nothing to worry about, especially since the PC is for HTPC use.

It's nice to see someone make a high end video card in half height form. Nice for all of the slim towers and desktop PC cases that won't allow a full height card.

I hope it actually comes out and I hope it's reasonably priced. It will work great with your other components.

£70.49 Inc VAT sounds good to me! :)

I would not worry about "bottlenecking". There is always something in your system that slows things down.

It does take a 6 pin PCIe power connector cable from the power supply unit, so your friend will need to consider that. I don't know if that graphics card has the power cable adapter included.

Install Vista. Then install the things you want on your motherboard's driver and software CD (if you like what they offer). Then install your video card driver.

Usually the motherboard's driver CD has all of the necessary hardware drivers you need. If you added another device that's not covered by the motherboard's driver CD or the video card's driver, then install that driver, too. :)