If you want to learn a bit more about graphics cards, you’ve come to the right place. Here is how you check your graphics card on Windows 10, and a bit more on understanding how it all works.
How to Check Your Graphics Card Using Device Manager
Finding out what GPU you have installed on your Windows 10 computer is pretty simple; it will take a bit more work to find the model of the actual card you have.
How to Check Your Graphics Card Model
In general, knowing your chipset is what you’ll need when dealing with the basics of a graphics card. If you need to go more in-depth and figure out the model of the actual card, you’ll have to do a bit more leg work. There are a few ways to do this.
How to Check Your Graphics Card by Opening Your PC
If your PC is easily accessible, the easiest way to figure out your graphics card is to open your PC and look at it. Your graphics card should be easy to spot, since it plugs into the motherboard and has at least one fan attached to it. There should be a sticker on it that tells you the model number, though you may need to unplug it from your motherboard to get a better look at it.
Download a Third-Party Program to Check Graphics Card
There are a few third-party programs that can give you all sorts of specs on your PC hardware. They all work a bit differently, but two that are both free and safe are Speccy and CPU-Z. These programs can give you a variety of details about the different hardware inside your PC, including your graphics card. Once you’ve downloaded the program and run it, select Graphics, find the name of your GPU, and look for the Subvendor or manufacturer name to determine who actually made your graphics card. To reiterate, in most instances, you’ll be fine just opening the device manager to figure out your GPU. However, you may need the actual card information if there’s a warranty issue or other hardware problem you need to sort out.
What’s the Difference Between a Graphics Card and a GPU?
You’ll often see “GPU” and “Graphics Card” used almost interchangeably, but they are a bit different. The GPU is the actual chip that does the heavy lifting; they are generally made by one of two designers: Nvidia or AMD. The GPU is the powerful and expensive piece of hardware that delivers the actual graphics to your monitor. A graphics card has a lot of other aspects to it besides the GPU, including cooling fans, voltage regulation, etc. They’re also made by a variety of companies with plenty of small differences, but you will often see the chipset (e.g. “Nvidia GeForce 1080” or “AMD Radeon 560”) displayed as prominently, if not more so, than the model of the card itself.
