Linux find out graphics card installed in my system

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: April 24, 2007]

Q. How do I find out which graphics card installed in my Linux desktop system? I’m using Ubuntu Linux. I don’t want to open up the computer hardware to just see the make and model of the graphics card in a system.

A. You don’t have to open the hardware to see the make and model of the graphics card in a system. There is direct method provided by using lspci command.

This command will usually tell you the vendor and model of your card. Open xterminal or shell prompt and type the command:
$ lspci $ lspci -v $ lspci -v | less
Output:

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] PCI/PCI-X Bridge
00:02.0 Host bridge: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] Legacy South Bridge
00:02.1 IDE interface: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] IDE
00:02.2 ISA bridge: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] LPC
00:03.0 USB Controller: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] USB (rev 01)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] USB (rev 01)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] USB (rev 01)
00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:0d.0 PCI bridge: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] PCI/PCI-X Bridge (rev b2)
01:0e.0 RAID bus controller: Broadcom BCM5785 [HT1000] SATA (Native SATA Mode)
02:03.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
02:03.1 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)

Look for video controller / vga keywords in above output listing.

It is a good idea to run update-pciids command to fetches the current version of the pci.ids file from the primary distribution site and installs it. You must run update-pciids command as root user:
$ sudo update-pciids
OR
# update-pciids