AGP?

[giggsy7]

I recently purchased a new pc from Tiny. I am aware that they have been recently been acquired by Time Computers. In the advertisement from the paper it says that it has AGP graphics. After setting up my pc I found out that the graphics are in fact on-board the main board. The memory is 32mb but shared with system ram. It is my understanding that AGP graphics would mean a separate card plugged into the AGP slot. I phoned 3 different people at Tiny support. One of them probably has never seen a pc before the day he spoke to me. The next one tried to help but he said I had got what I ordered; I had to speak to the Direct Sales team. They said the graphics are AGP and are glued onto the AGP port and there is nothing more they can do.
What a load of rubbish. They must think I was born yesterday. Am I right in saying the advertisement was misleading, and if it is, what recourse do I have?

[DANIMAL]

it is still agp Graphics I think you got screwed only if you said you did not want onboard video.

btw you can always disable the onboard and add another card into the AGP slot availible

[Sowulo]

While their tech support does seem to leave a lot lacking. At the risk of painfully over-simplifying, the designation 'AGP' pertains to the way the video chip communicates with the rest of the system. Typically, devices that use the PCI bus communicates at 33MHz and the AGP bus communicates at 66MHz. Your video is undoubtedly using an AGP video. Whether integrated into the motherboard or plugged into an AGP socket does not make it otherwise. Now there may be issues with sharing the system RAM and upgradeability, but that's another matter entirely....

[DANIMAL]

Als o there is a fine line there about sharing ram
If they say you have a 32MB video and 64 MB RAM then they are lying because if it where shared it would be 32M video and 32M ram

So unless they told you prior to buying that your 64M Ram would decrease to 32 if you wanted 32M for your video then they are also screwing you

When I sold PC's I always made sure the customer knew that one because they always come back asking.

[Platypus]

Check with Consumer Protection authorities, I think in Britain the rights and responsibilities of each party are closely defined. However if the advert specifically defined AGP "graphics" and didn't mention a card, then I expect you'll find they are covered. It may be best to approach their Customer Relations Dept (if they have one) and explain your misunderstanding of the terms. They may be open to an adjustment of the model or similar.

The on-board AGP graphics is a trap to watch out for.

[freddy]

time/tiny have always sold machines with "intigrated" or onboard graphics , going back as far as there "time machines" with cyrix 133 cpus in them (sis chipsets 5595 graphics),

a wording they use is "system ram"

Sowulo is correct about the AGP speed , and in a lot of cases the onboard vidio is quite good ,

If there IS a AGP slot in the machine then at a latter date you can buy any vidio card you want.

to the trained eye a quick look at the rear of the machine would have revealed all, the vidio port would be away from the rest of the connectors and would be sat in a verticle slot (agp slot)

much as I would like to slag Time on there quality parts , i won,t ,,,,,,,cos you will spend more time queing on there helpline than using the thing.

freddy

[Computer Tech NE]

I see this a lot. Such as, "I bought this AGP video card because my HP Pavillion came with AGP 3D graphics and I wanted to upgrade". "Where do I plug this in at". Guess what, it doesn't have an AGP slot, just built in AGP graphics. You have to disable the built in AGP and install a PCI video card--good ones are becoming harder to find. Some HP's are a real pain to disable the onboard video if you don't know the specific method for that specific model. Last one I did I had to leave the onboard video enabled in the bios and disable the card in the windows device properties. Shut down, install the pci card and restart. Disable it in the bios and it wouldn't post. This is why I tell my friends to get a custom computer built so you can choose a good motherboard.