Graphics Card is also known as ‘Video Card’, ‘Display Adapter’, ‘Video Adapter’ and ‘Graphics Accelerator’. Display Adapters are essential part of your computer that controls and enhance how graphics including pictures, videos, programs, animation and 3D are displayed on your computer screen.

Graphics card components are on the separate card that plug into a slot on motherboard – the main part of computer. On other hand Video Card driver is important software to communicate your video cards with Operating System installed in your computer. Some popular graphics card manufacturers including NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Gigabyte, are known for making best graphics card for PCs/laptops.

Depending on graphics card models and Operating System architecture, you must have right Graphics Card Driver installed in your device. For example, if you have NVIDIA video card integrated on Windows 10 64-bit OS based computer, then you need to download and install drivers for NVIDIA graphics card according to Graphics Card models and OS variant.

Difference between Integrated and Dedicated GPU: Types of Graphics Card

Note that without graphics card or GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), you can’t see anything on your display or monitor. This is necessary components of your computer to output an image to your display. So, you need a GPU whether it is dedicated (or Discrete) GPU or Integrated GPU.

Integrated GPU (Graphics Card): This graphics cards are built right into the chipset of the motherboard so there is no need to extra hardware. Most motherboards these days come with graphics card or GPU integrated into motherboard or even the CPU itself. It means when you buy a motherboard, you get a simple built-in video card or GPU which can produce graphics including image, videos, animation and 3D on your display.

This type of graphics cards are very power efficient and use very little power of CPU. Due to its standardization, you will rarely run into any problems with Graphics Card Drivers or its compatibility. But integrated graphics cards are not good for modern games in terms of gaming performance. It might stutter through it or worse, just outright fails to load the modern games when try to load it on integrated GPU.

When you throw any graphics-heavy task at the integrated System including rendering video, playing a current generation 3D video games, or other heavy task, it consumes more power of your System resources which can affects your System performance. So, it is clear that integrated graphics cards are not right choice for modern gaming on PC/laptops.

Dedicated GPU (Graphics Card): In terms of graphics and gaming performance, dedicated or (Discrete GPUs) are better as compared to Integrated GPUs. This type of GPU is separate hardware which is added to motherboard externally. So, if you want to buy a new Graphics Card for your computer, then you are talking about ‘Dedicated GPU or discrete Graphics Card’.

This type of graphics card has a sophisticated computer chipset designed explicitly for task for processing video, GPU, and includes dedicated RAM for task. It can improve your gaming and graphics experience and also makes tasks like processing images in Photoshop smoother and faster.

Dedicated GPUs might have VGA and DVI port which may be included in motherboard, along with HDMI port or even duplicate ports like double-DVI ports, which allow you to easily hook up multiple monitors. Apart from performance, this type of GPU is costly which can be varied according to graphics card model.

How to find Graphics Card in Windows device using ‘DirectX Diagnostic Tool’?

DirectX Diagnostic Tool will help you to find the name of graphics card installed, and how much video memory it has. To do so, follow the steps below.

Step 1: Press “Windows + R” keys together from keyboard to open “Run Dialog Box”

Step 2: In the opened “Run Dialog Box”, type “dxdiag” and hit “Ok” button to open “DirectX Diagnostic Tool”

Step 3: In the opened window, click on “Display Tab”

Step 4: On the “Display” tab, information about your graphics card is shown in the “Device” section. Here, you can see the name your Graphics Card, and how much video memory it has.

How to download and reinstall Graphics Card Driver?

Depending on graphics card model you have, you need to download and install the display adapter drivers in your computer. You can find the graphics card model or name of graphics card using above steps. If you found ‘Intel HD Graphics 4600 as display adapter’ model, then you will have to download or reinstall drivers from ‘Intel’ official site in case if you face problem with driver like driver compatibility issue.

If display driver is missing, corrupted or outdated, then driver update is required. Note that display adapter driver related problem can be appeared on ‘DirectX Diagnostic Tool > Display Tab’ in “Notes” section. If the issue is related to video card driver, then you can fix this by updating or reinstalling the driver.

Download and install Graphics Card Driver from manufacturer website:

Step 1: At first, you need to visit graphics card manufacturer website like Intel, and download the latest driver according to your graphics card model and Operating System architecture, and save the ‘setup file’ in your computer

Step 2: Double-click on ‘setup file’ and follow on-screen instructions to finish the install

Step 3: After that, restart your computer to save the changes

Update Graphics Card Driver using ‘Device Manager’:

If video card driver is outdated, then it can trigger several System issues. So, you need to update the driver.

Step 1: Press “Windows + X” keys together from keyboard and select “Device Manager”

Step 2: In the opened “Device Manager”, locate and expand “Display Adapters” category

Step 3: Right-click on your graphics card and select “Update Driver Software…”

Step 4: Follow on-screen to install the update and once done, restart your computer to save the changes

Reinstall Graphics Card Driver on Windows 10

If display adapter driver is not properly installed, then it can cause several System problems. So, you need to uninstall the driver and then reinstall it in your computer.

Step 1: Open “Device Manager” and expand “Display Adapters” category

Step 2: Right-click on your graphics card and select “Uninstall Device”

Step 3: Follow on-screen instructions to finish the uninstall process. After that, restart your computer.

Step 4: After restart, open “Device Manager” again and click on “Action > Scan for hardware changes”. This will reinstall the graphics driver in your computer.

Conclusion

I am sure this post helped you to know about Graphics Card, types of GPU, how to find the graphics card model you have, how to download and reinstall Graphics Card Driver on Windows device. You can read & follow our instructions to do so. If this post really helped you, then you can share this post with others to help them.