Gamer's hands on a PC keyboard
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All computers accept graphics hardware that handles everything from displaying your desktop and decoding videos to rendering demanding PC games. Virtually modernistic PCs accept graphics processing units (GPUs) made by Intel, NVIDIA, or AMD, but remembering which model you have installed can be hard.

While your computer's CPU and RAM are also important, the GPU is commonly the virtually critical component when it comes to playing PC games. If you don't have a powerful enough GPU, you can't play newer PC games—or y'all may have to play them with lower graphical settings.

Some computers have depression-power "onboard" or "integrated" graphics, while others have powerful "dedicated" or "discrete" graphics cards (sometimes called video cards.) Here'southward how to see what graphics hardware is in your Windows PC.

On Windows 10, you can check your GPU information and usage details correct from the Task Manager. Right-click the taskbar from the bottom of your screen and select "Task Manager" or printing Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open up the chore director.

Option to open Task Manager from Windows 10's taskbar

On Windows 11, y'all can besides press Ctrl+Shift+Esc or right-click the Start push button and choose "Task Managing director."

From there, select the "Performance" tab at the top of the window—if you don't run across the tabs, click "More Details." Cull "GPU 0" in the sidebar. The GPU's manufacturer and model name are displayed in the superlative-correct corner of the window.

You'll also see other information, such as the amount of dedicated memory on your GPU, in this window. Windows 10's Task Manager displays your GPU usage here, and you tin can besides view GPU usage by application.

If your organization has multiple GPUs, you lot'll likewise see "GPU i" so on here. Each represents a unlike physical GPU.

Name of computer's GPU shown in Windows 10's Task Manager

On older versions of Windows, such equally Windows 7, you can find this information in the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. To open it, press Windows+R, blazon "dxdiag" into the Run dialog that appears, and press Enter.

Launching dxdiag from Windows 10's Run dialog

Click the "Display" tab and look at the "Name" field in the "Device" department. Other statistics, such every bit the amount of video retentivity (VRAM) built into your GPU, are likewise listed here.

DirectX Diagnostic Tool showing name of computer's graphics card

If yous have multiple GPUs in your organisation—for example, equally in a laptop with a low-power Intel GPU for employ on battery power and a high-power NVIDIA GPU for utilize while plugged in and gaming—you can control which GPU a game uses from Windows 10's Settings app. These controls are also built into the NVIDIA Control Panel.

RELATED: How to Monitor GPU Usage in the Windows Task Director

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