What Kind of Video Card Do You Have?

With all the information you’re getting on video cards, you’re probably eager to know what kind of video graphics card you have in your computer. That is what will give you an idea of what the type of card you have is capable of and whether you need an upgrade. But how can you figure out what type of video card you actually have?

Identifying Your Video Card – Brute Force Approach

You COULD tear open your computer and look right at the video card, but this kind of brute force approach should probably only be used as a last resort. You want to expose your computer’s innards to the elements as infrequently as possible. Frankly, even once you get your computer open you might not be able to tell exactly which video card you have. Fortunately, there’s a much easier way for PC users to identify their video cards.

Identifying Your Video Card—Easy Approach

What you will want to do is look in the Device Manager provided by Windows. The way to do this is to click System in the Control Panel. Under the hardware tab, there will be a button labeled “Device Manager.” Click this button. This will give you a display of the various devices that are connected to your computer, that enable it to do all the wonderful things it does. One of the icons should be “Display Adapters.” Click the symbol to open this icon and you should see a list of your video cards. Now you know what video card or cards you have in your computer.

To learn even more, you can right click on the icon for the video card itself. You’ll see a box of options, the bottom one being “Properties.” Click this option. This will tell you not only the manufacturer and status of the card, but will even tell you what bus slot the card is using. You can get more detailed information from here as well, but this is probably more than enough for your basic computer user.

Identifying Your Video Card—Using the Information

Now that you know what kind of video card you have, you can compare it to other video cards that are on the market today. If there are certain aspects of your computer video experience that you are not happy with, you can see how your card compares on that dimension to other cards, and find the video card that is just right for your needs. Once you have installed a new video card, you can, of course, remind yourself about that video card’s specifications the same way.