It seems completely natural that any user would like to know which video card is installed on the computer, and not so much interested in the name of the graphic chip, as its full characteristics. To view information about the video adapter, you can use several simple methods. Many, quite frankly, don’t even know about some, that's why it’s proposed to talk about them later. The simplest methods that can be implemented by anyone, even a novice user who is not particularly versed in information technology and informative systems, are given.
How to find out your video card: the simplest method
In general, as you know, for all installed hardware in Windows systems, a special applet called the “Device Manager” is responsible. You can call it through the administration section or the "Control Panel", but the fastest way to get to it is through the "Run" console, in which the command devmgmt.msc is entered.
How to find out your video card in this manager? Yes, just expand the group of video adapters. True, there is one caveat. The fact is that the main characteristics will be unavailable, and instead of them - only the name of the main chipset is shown.
Despite this, you can use the adapter's properties and go to the information tab, where from the drop-down list you need to select the display of the equipment ID. Please note that the list that appears may contain several lines with identifiers VEN and DEV. The first (Vendor) is the manufacturer, the second (Device) is the device model. The longest line corresponds to the installed device. If you want, you can specify a search for it, after which you will get a full description of the adapter in the results. But in general, this method is mainly used to find the most suitable drivers, if neither Windows nor third-party programs could install them.
How to find out which video card is on the computer through system information?
As already clear, the above method is not the best. Let's see how to recognize a video card on Windows using informative system tools.
Call the Run menu and enter the msinfo32 command. A system information window will appear. Go to the components and select the display section. There is already a bit more information here, but all the same, everything that might interest an ordinary user is not here (mostly technical information is provided).
Management Utilities
If you have a discrete rather than an integrated adapter installed, the question of how to find out your video card is solved even more simply. In modern computer systems today, only NVIDIA and ATI / AMD graphics chips are mainly present. When installing the drivers, the accompanying configuration software is automatically installed for them (PhysX NVIDIA control panel, Catalyst, etc.).
In this case, just open any of these programs, and the main tab will immediately show information about the model of the adapter. Detailed device parameters can be viewed in the information section, not to mention the fact that with the help of such programs you can fine-tune the adapters, for example, for optimization in games.
Using DirectX Tools
Finally, another method to solve the problem of how to find out your video card is to use the DirectX dialog. Looking ahead, it can be noted that this technique is suitable for users who have integrated cards installed (none of the methods described above allows their complete characteristics to be obtained).
To access the information, use the Run console and enter the dxdiag command, and in the window that appears, go to the display tab. Just here you can see not only the chip manufacturer, but also the amount of allocated memory. And then many Windows complain, saying that the system does not provide accurate information on this type of integrated video card. Gives, and how. You just need to know where to look.
Third party programs
If you don’t like the above methods, you can use programs like CPU-Z, GPU-Z, AIDA64 and others.
They actually have a lot more parameters, however, for the average user, many of them are, to put it mildly, completely unnecessary (for example, temperature indicators, or caching levels). Typically, such programs are used to optimize the operation of equipment or to test it in different modes (sometimes for overlocking - overclocking central or graphic processors). But for a user who has no idea about the essence of this issue, such programs are needed only in a minimal informative way.
Brief summary
Of course, this is far from all, but only the most basic ways of obtaining information about a graphic chip and its main characteristics, but the most simple and affordable even for a novice user. Thus, the conclusion suggests itself: the use of control programs for discrete cards and the DirectX dialog is the most preferred tool. However, everyone decides for himself which method of viewing characteristics to give preference to.