Identify Nvidia Graphics Card By Serial Number

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Whether you're looking to upgrade or are curious about your computer's specifications, you may want to know what video card, or GPU, is in the computer. Some PCs have integrated graphics, and some have a video card. In either case, the instructions below help you determine and view the graphics device powering your computer's video output. To proceed, choose your preferred method from the list below, or read all of the sections and proceed from there.

Whatever your reasons might be, Windows 10 includes multiple ways to quickly find out the graphics card specifications using Settings, Device Manager, System Information, DirectX Diagnostic Tool. SLI and NVLINK Bridges The all-new ROG NVLink Bridge connects two GeForce RTX NVLink SLI-ready graphics cards with a 50 GB/s link. This means you can count on super-smooth gameplay at 4K and higher resolution with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and 2080 graphics cards. Open the computer Unplug everything from the back of the computer, open the case, and look for any visual identification printed on the video card or motherboard. Many times you can find the manufacturer's name, model number, serial number, or other unique information that identifies the video card or video chipset you have. Is there any way to trace where a serial number on a GPU was purchased? A customer serial swapped a 1080 founders edition and sent me a card with a different serial.

Tip

To determine how much video memory the video card has, see: How much memory does my video card have?

Device Manager

One of the quickest ways to see what type of graphics processor is in your Windows computer is through the Windows Device Manager.

  1. Press the Windows key, type Device Manager, and then press Enter.
  2. In the window that appears, expand the Display adapters section.
  1. The GPU is listed under the Display adapters section. For example, the picture above shows a Radeon RX 580 Series video card is installed in the computer. In this example, only the model of the video card is listed. You'd have to know that Radeon is a brand of the ATI company.

Third-party program

There are many third-party programs that detect the video card in your computer. We recommend installing and using the CAM program by following the steps below.

Identify Nvidia Graphics Card By Serial Number List

  1. Open an Internet browser and go to the CAM page.
  2. In the middle of the screen, click the button.
  3. Once the download has finished, install it from your browser and open the program.
  1. You will see a window open that looks like the image below.
  1. From here, you can see which GPU your computer has in the middle section of the main screen. For example, the picture above shows a Radeon RX 580 Series video card, or GPU, is installed in the computer. In this example, only the model of the video card is listed. You'd have to know that Radeon is a brand of the ATI company.
Tip

Using a third-party program such as CAM not only allows you to identify the video card but also measure important settings. As shown in the picture, the video card temperature, load, clock speed, and fan speed are also seen.

OEM lookup

If you have an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) computer (e.g., Dell, Hewlett Packard, etc.), locate the serial number or service tag number, and then look it up on the manufacturer's website.

At boot or POST

Some computers may display the video card or chipset during the POST. Try rebooting the computer and as it is booting up, press the 'Pause / Break' key to temporarily halt the computer's boot process and read the text on the screen. If you are unfamiliar with video card manufacturers or chipsets, write down some of the company names you see and search our video card drivers section for that company.

Open the computer

Unplug everything from the back of the computer, open the case, and look for any visual identification printed on the video card or motherboard. Many times you can find the manufacturer's name, model number, serial number, or other unique information that identifies the video card or video chipset you have. The picture below is an example of an older AGP video card (newer computers use PCIe).

Tip

If your video card is on the motherboard, you can find the motherboard video chipset by identifying the motherboard make and model and reading the motherboard documentation.

FCC identification number

If you cannot locate a manufacturer or model number of the video card, but you see an FCC identification number, we recommend performing a search using it. Additional information about FCC numbers and how to search for information about them is on our FCC definition.

Debug routine (older computers)

Note

New versions of Windows no longer include the debug command. If you are running Windows Vista, 7, 8, or 10, this recommendation will not work.

  1. At the C:> prompt, type the following command.
  1. At the - prompt, type the following command:
  1. After typing the command above, several lines of text similar to the following text appear.

The example dump above gives you enough information to determine the make and the year of the video card. On line four in the above dump, you can see the make of this video card, which is nVIDIA TNT. If you were to search online, you would find that nVIDIA TNT is the Riva TNT graphics card chipset (VGA). In our example, line five is the video card version, and line six is the Copyright, which is the year the graphics card was manufactured.

  1. If you cannot capture any information that sounds like the video card, you can also type the following:

This command gives you a dump similar to the example above. However, it may have additional information about the video card.

Note

If the video card is onboard, you may get the motherboard name or chipset. If you have an onboard video card, get the video drivers for your chipset manufacturer. The video chipset drivers are available through the motherboard manufacturer.

Identify
  1. When you are ready to exit the debug prompt, type quit and press Enter to exit back to the MS-DOS prompt. If you want to close the MS-DOS window, type exit and press Enter.

Additional information

  • See our video card definition for further information and related links.

The two major video card manufacturers are AMD and NVIDIA. They both have their own model schemes that you can use to help determine what video card to purchase. I have neglected to include laptop specific models as recommended laptop video cards will follow the same conventions below (more or less).



AMD :


AMD has recently switched from a 3-digit system to a 4-digit system; however, it also has some video card models that don't follow normal conventions like the Vega line of graphics. Their products range from the 500 series to the Vega series, the 5000 series and most recently the 6000 series. After you've determined which series the card is, you can then figure out the performance value. Typically, you will find that a higher number corresponds to a more powerful video card. The RX 540 is the is the lowest performing graphics card in the 500 series and the RX 590 is the most powerful. The Vega 56 is the entry-level card in the Vega series and the RX 6900 XT is the most powerful card available from AMD currently and is a part of the 6000 series. The XT models indicate a slightly faster variant of the non-XT models. You can find a list of AMD graphics cards on their website.



Performance Examples:


Low Performance: RX 540, 550, 560, 570


Mid Performance: RX 580, 590, Vega 56, Vega 64, RX 5500, 5500 XT, 5600 XT


High Performance: RX 5700, 5700 XT


Ultra Performance: RX 6800, 6800 XT, 6900 XT




NVIDIA GEFORCE:


NVIDIA, thankfully, has been much more consistent in their numbering conventions over the last few years. The current generations from oldest to newest are the 10th, 16th, 20th, and 30th generation NVidia cards. The final two numbers for each model will indicate the performance level with 10 being the lowest performance value and 90 being the highest performance value. The GT 1030 is the lowest performance model that NVidia currently makes while RTX 3090 is the most powerful model that they currently make. You can find a list of NVIDIA graphics cards on their website.



Performance Examples:


Low Performance: GT 1030, GTX 1050, 1050 Ti, 1060, 1650


Mid Performance: GTX 1650 Super, 1660, 1660 Ti, 1660 Super, 1070, RTX 2060


High Performance: GTX 1070 Ti, 1080, RTX 2060 Super, 2070, 2070 Super, 3060


Ultra Performance: GTX 1080 Ti, RTX 2080, 2080 Super, 3070, 3080, 3090


List Of Nvidia Graphics Cards



Identify Nvidia Graphics Card By Serial Number


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