Quite often, many users, before installing new programs or modern games on their computers, it may be necessary to study the system requirements of the applications and determine how much they correspond to the hardware installed on the PC or laptop, among which a graphic adapter or accelerator, called a video card, plays one of the main roles . We will talk about how to find out the parameters of a video card. Ordinary users should not be confused or even frightened by this question, since in almost all recent generations of Windows, obtaining such information is simple.
How to find out the parameters of a video card in BIOS / UEFI?
To get started, let's pay attention to the boot of a computer or laptop, when the main window appears with brief parameters, but the operating system does not start yet. As you know, information about all equipment and its some basic settings (parameters) are stored in a special chip of primary BIOS systems, so you can get all the necessary brief information there.
To enter the BIOS / UEFI interface, either the Del key or other buttons and the combination provided for this are used. In the interface, you need to look at the Chipset or Advanced section (if you have a discrete card installed) or view the Onboard Devices section (in the case of an integrated accelerator). But the information here is not as much as we would like, so it is better to use other methods.
But in primary systems, if necessary, you can switch from one graphic chip to another, if such a need is ripe, for example, if there are failures in the operating system due to problems with a discrete adapter.
How to find out the graphics card settings on a Windows computer: simple methods
In the Windows systems themselves, until recently, obtaining such information also seemed extremely problematic. But today they have enough necessary funds. Speaking about how to find out the parameters of a video card, it’s worth mentioning right away that using the standard “Device Manager” is completely impractical because you won’t find the necessary information there.
One of the simplest and most universal solutions is to use system information (msinfo32).
After calling this applet from the Run console, you need to expand the component section and go to the Display item. On the right, all parameters will be presented, including the name of the chip, and memory, and drivers, and interrupts, and identifiers, etc.
If you consider issues related to how to find out the parameters of the integrated video card or discrete adapter in the tenth version of Windows, you can use the no less simple method.
Using RMB on an empty place on the “Desktop” you need to go to the screen properties, then scroll down the page in the display menu, click on the hyperlink for additional display parameters, and in the new window click on the link for additional adapter parameters. In the window that appears, the main characteristics will be presented. If you want to get advanced information regarding, say, supported operating modes, respectively, you need to use the button located just below the information block.
It is just as easy to determine the characteristics of a video card in a laptop or on a stationary computer terminal by using the DirectX dialog, which is called up from the Run menu by abbreviation dxdiag.
Here you need to move to the screen tab. In the block on the left, the main parameters of the graphic chip are displayed, and information on the drivers installed for this equipment will be presented on the right.
Specialized programs from graphic chip manufacturers
If you own video cards from NVIDIA or AMD, it is completely optional to use the means of operating or primary systems. The fact is that when installing the drivers, additional control utilities and applications are automatically integrated into the system, in which you can also find the information you are interested in.
So, for NVIDIA graphics cards, you can use programs like the “NVIDIA Control Panel” or Riva Tuner, and Catalyst is a good choice for AMD chips.
General Information Utilities
Finally, let's see how to find out the parameters of a video card using third-party software for this. Often, such informational applications look more interesting and provide more information than the means of the Windows systems themselves.
However, for the simplest cases when you do not need to configure the card or control its parameters in real time, you can use applications like Speecy, CPU-Z / GPU-Z, AIDA64 (formerly Everest applet) and many other similar utilities.