How to find out which video card is on a laptop

Finding out which video card is on a laptop may be necessary for a number of reasons. For example, to evaluate the capabilities of your system in games or when buying a device from your hands. It is simply unrealistic to quickly determine the brand and brand of the card by its appearance, since you will have to completely disassemble the laptop. You can see which graphics accelerator is in the system using both Windows tools and third-party utilities.

If the drivers are not installed or do not work

Sometimes you need to find out the video card on a laptop immediately after installing the system, without special drivers. At least in order to download the necessary ones from the Internet. In this case, it is impossible to determine the parameters of the video card using system tools.

In such a situation, third-party utilities will be required. One of the most informative programs is called AIDA64. Its only problem is that the normally functioning version can only be used for free for a few days. But it is not difficult to download the so-called Portable version. Its capabilities are limited, but you can determine the manufacturer and model of the video card. All the necessary information is in the Display section, where there is data on both the card and the GPU.

The second useful utility called GPU-Z. It also accesses the device directly and allows you to find out the model of the video card without drivers. The program displays all information about the processor, chip temperature, supported instruction sets and much more. In addition, you can accurately find out the manufacturer of a particular product.

Via device manager

On a correctly configured operating system, it is easiest to find out which video card is running on a laptop. The easiest way to do this is in Device Manager. Its launch is different in different versions of Windows.

1. All operating systems, from Windows XP to Windows 10, have a Device Manager snap-in. To run it, you need to press Win + R and enter the command devmgmt.msc.
   

   

2. In Windows 7, you need to go to Start-Control Panel, switch the window display to Large Icons, find System. After launching the icon, on the active tab, click the device manager button. You can click Start-Search, then type Device Manager.
3. In Windows 8, Search starts on the start screen, Device Manager is entered.
4. In Windows 10, click on the magnifying glass and type Device Manager in the search bar. The second option is to right-click on Start, then select the desired item in the menu that appears.

On a note! To understand which adapter is discrete and which is integrated, in the device manager is quite simple. An integrated video card is usually named after the chipset model. A discrete one has a code, a name, and (if the drivers are properly configured) the name of the manufacturer.

Through the properties of the video adapter

You can see which card is installed on the laptop through the properties of the adapter.

1. On Windows 7 right-click on the desktop, select Screen resolution, then Advanced options. On the Adapter tab, all the necessary data will be displayed.
2. On Windows 10 the same information can be obtained by clicking Start-Settings-System-Properties of the graphics adapter.

Important! This method only works on a properly configured operating system with correctly installed drivers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaMrYGVjUL0

If the driver is not working properly

You can check the model and find out the characteristics of the video card by its unique identifier. This information is located in the system device settings. To find out, you need to run the dispatcher. Then:

• expand the video adapters section;
• on an unknown device or one with a yellow triangle icon next to the name, press the right mouse button;
• select Properties;
• go to the Details tab.

Here, from the drop-down list, select Hardware ID. In the lower area, after right-clicking on the first line, you should click Copy.

The received identifier is used to search for the card model and its manufacturer on third-party resources. One of them — DevID.info website. Here, using the received code, you can not only determine the characteristics of the video card and its model, but also download correctly working drivers.

Diagnostic Tools

You can check which video adapter is installed in the system using DirectX diagnostic tools.

Important! This graphics engine package is already available in Windows 7 and above. In Windows XP, the package must be downloaded from the Microsoft website and installed.

After that, by pressing Win + R and writing the dxdiag command, you can get into the diagnostic shell. Here, on the Display tab, details are given not only about the adapter, but also about the drivers that control it. For novice users, this is the easiest way to proceed. It allows not only to determine the data of the video card. With incorrectly working drivers, diagnostic tool will immediately show the presence of problems.

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