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Hardware Guide - Identifying your GPU
Contributors: Yamadron, Felix

How To Identify Your GPU

To help us here we will need to run the free and simple to use GPU-Z program. If you don't have GPU-Z installed then grab the tiny file from our Tools page.

This tool will help you identify more about your graphics card and its technical specifications. Helping you answer questions like, which Direct X version does my graphics card support? and what shader model does my GPU use?

Note - there are 2 types of renderers. The software renderer and hardware renderer.
The software renderer is your operating system (OS) and this determines which Direct X version your computer system can support.
The hardware renderer is your graphics card (GPU / GFX). This also has a Direct X version it can natively support.

  • Microsoft Windows XP supports up to Direct X 9.0c
  • Microsoft Windows Vista supports up to Direct X 10 / Direct X 10 for Vista SP2.
  • Microsoft Windows 7 supports up to Direct X 11

Ok let’s run the GPU-Z .exe file (currently called GPU-Z.0.5.5.exe) and take a look at what we are presented with. The application opens a new window displaying all the technical information about your graphics card or GPU or GFX.

Below we have included an image to explain the various results you are presented with.
Click on the image below to zoom in.

how to identify your GPU image

You will notice that hovering over the fields in the new GPU-Z window that you will be presented with useful explainations as shown in our image.


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