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

While your computer'due south CPU and RAM are also of import, the GPU is ordinarily the near critical component when it comes to playing PC games. If you don't have a powerful plenty GPU, you can't play newer PC games—or you lot may have to play them with lower graphical settings.

Some computers have depression-ability "onboard" or "integrated" graphics, while others have powerful "dedicated" or "discrete" graphics cards (sometimes chosen video cards.) Here'due south how to run into what graphics hardware is in your Windows PC.

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

Option to open Task Manager from Windows 10's taskbar

On Windows xi, you can also press Ctrl+Shift+Esc or correct-click the Kickoff push and choose "Task Managing director."

From there, select the "Operation" tab at the top of the window—if yous don't see the tabs, click "More Details." Choose "GPU 0" in the sidebar. The GPU's manufacturer and model name are displayed in the top-correct corner of the window.

You lot'll also see other information, such every bit the corporeality of dedicated memory on your GPU, in this window. Windows 10'south Task Manager displays your GPU usage here, and you can also view GPU usage by application.

If your system has multiple GPUs, you'll also see "GPU one" and then on here. Each represents a different physical GPU.

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

On older versions of Windows, such as Windows 7, you can find this information in the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. To open information technology, printing 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 "Proper name" field in the "Device" section. Other statistics, such equally the amount of video memory (VRAM) built into your GPU, are too listed here.

DirectX Diagnostic Tool showing name of computer's graphics card

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

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

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