Newegg refurb video cards?

[kb3edk]

Hi everyone, my friend upgraded to a GeForce 7800 so I got his old MSI NX6800 128MB PCI-e video card to mess around with.

I installed it in a comp with the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 mobo, it runs fine with decent framerates on most games, I can't complain. It overclocks good with RivaTuner too.

Anyway I saw that Newegg was selling refurbs of this card for $108 on their site, I figured I'd get one and build a cheapo SLI rig later this year. So I got my refurb in the mail yesterday, when I swapped it in my box it wasn't DOA but framerates were waaaaaay down. Like < 10 fps on running 3DMark03. It only got a 1225 (the original one gets 8611 at stock speed). :disgust:

Is this pretty much a no brainer RMA? Or am I missing something obvious here like a driver reinstall? Just making sure there's not some super secret GPU serial number on each card that cripples it if it's not the original one installed on the system, or some other similar weirdness.

Thanks in advance for your help,

 

[akugami]

Not sure what you're saying but if it comes and works fine at stock rated speeds. Basically no overheating, no funny noises, no artifacts, runs at it's rated stock speed perfectly fine then you didn't get a lemon.

 

[kb3edk]

Hey thanks for the reply.

I guess what I'm saying is - I have two identical video cards A and B. I installed Windows and the nVidia drivers in my computer with video card A installed. Everything is fine.

Now if I want to see if video card B is working, shouldn't I just be able to yank out video card A and put B in, and if B's not working right then I know it's a lemon? I don't have to reinstall Windows or the nVidia drivers right?

Thanks again,

 

[buzzsaw13]

It should perform exactly the same as your other card if its the exact same card. Try a driver clean just to make sure, a reinstall of Windows probably wouldnt do much. If that doesn't work then you might want to RMA the card.

 

[JBT]

I'd just uninstall reinstall the video drivers if its not workign correctly at that point its something with the card.

 

[akugami]

Yeah, what the above two guys said. Just cause it's the same type of video card doesn't mean it won't be problematic just pulling the old card out and installing the new one. I'd do a uninstall and if you want to be absolutely sure, do the old Driver Cleaner thing, then reinstall the drivers after you plug in the new card. If it works perfectly fine and like your old card (at stock speeds) then it's not a lemon. Now, as far as overclocking goes, that's a YMMV.

If it's still problematic after the driver reinstall, I'd then think about RMA'ing it. There's (usually) nothing wrong with refurbs. Most of them are returned products that someone thought was bad but was actually perfectly fine. They can't be sold as new anymore so places like Newegg usually gets a batch of them for cheap and sells them for cheap. I've bought refurbed HD's and mobos and most of them have been good. If you get a bad one, just RMA.

 

[Sunrise089]

RMA