Linux find out my VIDEO Card Memory RAM size using command line utility

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: April 18, 2007]

Q. I have a quick question for you, Vivek: I’m trying to find out my NVDIA display card memory size. I’m using Fedora Core Linux. How do I find out my VIDEO Card Memory size?

A. you need to use lspci command. It is a utility for displaying information about all PCI buses in the system and all devices connected to them.

If you just type lspci, you will get output as follows with the list of attached PCI cards:
$ lspci
Output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g
01:02.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
01:02.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
01:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

You need to use string called devices in the specified domain - 00:02.0 VGA (highlighted in red color to display memory info);
$ lspci -v -s 00:02.0
Output:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
        Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology Unknown device 2562
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 177
        Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
        Memory at d8200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
        Capabilities:

This listing shows an Intel video card with 128 MB of video RAM. If you cannot find devices in the specified domain use following command and look for your display card name and memory field:
$ lspci -v | less

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