Bought PC for brother from bestbuy

[Izzy]

So I recently ordered a refurbished PC from bestbuy for my brother. It was about 250 dollars off because it was refurbished so it was a pretty good deal as far as prebuilt computers go.

It came in the mail today and the graphics card it came with wasn't the one that I payed for.

If I take it to the best buy that I ordered it from could I get them to give me the correct card?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Ref...&skuId=4960451

[Herogashix]

I think you probably can. Nothing's not worth a shot. If it doesn't come with what it says it does, you have every right to take it back and request the correct card.

ps, damn, sick PC.

[m0de]

if its advertised to come with that card, i would think they would have to include that card.. false advertisement if not included.

[Izzy]

So I went to bestbuy and they said we could do it, but we would have to give them the whole computer and they order a new one. I feel like they would just **** it up again and send us the same thing back.

It seems like a pain in the ass because he had already starting using the PC and moving files and installing stuff. I decided to just use some bestbuy gift cards and get a separate graphics card that is better than the card would have been and then take the card it came with and give it to a friend.

[Calcium Deposit]

The 6570 card listed in that link is very weak anyway.
It's barely better than integrated graphics, I wouldn't recommend it for gaming.

I do recommend the ATI 6670 if you want a low budget gaming card that will at the very least be able to render most modern games at medium.

A step up from the 6670 is the 6750, it's the card I have and it's serving me well so far. Capable of rendering Battlefield 3 and Dirt 3 at ultra gfx settings. I don't remember the price but it's still fairly low priced as far as graphics cards go.

[Mau5]

Wow, trade me computers

[ninjaKIWI]

Don't pair AMD cards with Intel chips. Get an nVidia card. The 550ti is pretty cheap, and it's pretty okay for gaming. I would recommend getting a 560 instead if you can afford it.

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by ninjaKIWI

Don't pair AMD cards with Intel chips. Get an nVidia card. The 550ti is pretty cheap, and it's pretty okay for gaming. I would recommend getting a 560 instead if you can afford it.

Pretty sure this is just a myth thing. There is no disadvantage to pairing intel / ati or amd / nvidia. It is just that amd owns ati and they market there stuff that way. Everything is compatible though.

Unless you can find a credible source that says otherwise. Everything I read says that it doesn't matter.

[UserNameGoesHere]

Refurbished computers suck but they might be your only choice if you're short on cash. I wouldn't pay more than a couple hundred for them though. They're good as second or tertiary computers, as the computer guests can use (so they don't eff up your main one), and just a playaround computer but not for a main.

Think about it -- you're not buying simply a used computer. You are buying one which has been refurbished, which means there was something wrong with the computer (or a perception of something being wrong with it) which may or may not have actually been fixed and it could have any number of other things wrong with it, and the chances of it developing problems are much higher than for other computers.

In this case I think you spent far too much on this. Price tag on the site says $529.99 and for that price you could have bought a decent new computer. I wouldn't have paid more than $250 (taxes included) for that. Also it's an HP -- not exactly the best brand choice. (Good printer brand .. not so good computer brand, IMO)

I think you made a poor purchasing decision.

[Calcium Deposit]

Originally Posted by ninjaKIWI

Don't pair AMD cards with Intel chips. Get an nVidia card. The 550ti is pretty cheap, and it's pretty okay for gaming. I would recommend getting a 560 instead if you can afford it.

I have never actually heard of any real compatibility problems with people mixing ATI/Nvidia/Intel. I have heard that the ATI crossfire feature doesn't work on some Intel chips (linking 2 or more ATI video cards).

If you have experienced problems with such a set up, I am interested in hearing about it.

[Izzy]

Refurbished computers have a far lower chance of being broken and breaking in the future then the same brand being non refurbished. They were sent back for most like trivial reasons, and then repaired and or inspected. A new computer has not. At any rate that isn't even the issue here. The computer itself works fine and all of the parts are great except the wrong graphics card. Which still works, just isn't the one I expected.

I put together the same or equivalent parts on newegg and it was a little more expensive. I would still build the computer myself if it was for me, but I was picking it for my brother and the putting it together himself wasn't worth it.

As for it being an HP it doesn't even matter. All of the parts inside of it have nothing to do with HP.

[fido123]

I bought into the myth that AMD processors worked better with ATI cards and Intel processors worked better with NVidea cards but I've found this simply not to be true. The only thing I've found to be true is this:

Originally Posted by Calcium Deposit

I have heard that the ATI crossfire feature doesn't work on some Intel chips (linking 2 or more ATI video cards).

Also I agree that refurbished > brand new since hardware is most likely to fail when it's new and may have unknown defects. I'd say there's still some kind of risk you might get a really shitty referb though but I wouldn't worry about it.

[Calcium Deposit]

Well that myth never made sense since NVidia is NOT Intel...

[Izzy]

We ended up getting a 550 Ti and it works great. Quality budget gaming build imo even if the base of it was a prebuilt HP.

What I am now interested in is this 520 GT I took out of his computer. It has an hdmi port so I put it in my own computer along with my 9800 gtx. Windows will obviously hate this because the drivers aren't the same, but I want to get this to work so I can have dual screens plus my 1080p tv.

I put them in together and kind of got it to work by disabling windows automatic driver install so that it doesn't try and configure things itself, but occasionally my computer freezes now for reasons unknown.

Edit: Turned down the tv's resolution to 720p from 1080p and it hasn't been causing problems. Might have been a power issue even though my current PC has a 750 watt psu.