You do not have to open the hardware, desktop, laptop computer powered by Linux to see the make and model of the graphics card in a system. There is a direct method provided by using lspci and other commands on Linux to get hardware information. You need to use the following commands to find out graphics cards in Linux using the CLI and GUI methods:
Tutorial details | |
---|---|
Difficulty | Easy (rss) |
Root privileges | Yes |
Requirements | Linux |
Time | 5m |
- lspci command
- lshw command
- grep command
- update-pciids command
- GUI tools such as hardinfo and gnome-system-information command.
Linux Find Out Graphics Card Information
First you need to update the PCI ID database.
Download the latest version of the PCI ID list
Grab the current version of the pci.ids file from the Internet:
$ sudo update-pciids
OR
# update-pciids
Sample outputs:
[sudo] password for vivek: % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 259k 100 259k 0 0 54946 0 0:00:04 0:00:04 --:--:-- 55497 Done.
How to check graphics card on Linux
Type the following lspci command. It will usually tell you the vendor and model of your card. Open the Terminal/xterminal or shell prompt and type the command:
$ lspci
$ lspci -v
$ lspci -v | less
Sample outputs:
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 / 3D keywords in above output listing. Please note that if you do not see your card, try updating pci database. 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
Example: Find out the model of my graphics card on my Laptop powered by Linux
Type the following lspci command along with grep command or egrep command:
$ lspci | grep -i --color 'vga\|3d\|2d'
## using egrep ##
$ lspci -v | egrep -i --color 'vga|3d|2d'
Sample outputs:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK104GLM [Quadro K5000M] (rev a1)
Please note the device ID # 01:00.0. Now, to get detailed information, enter:
$ sudo lspci -v -s 01:00.0
Sample outputs:
Fig.01: lspci in action – displaying my Dell laptop Nvidia graphics card info
How to get the GPU info on Linux using GUI tools
Need to identify the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) in a Linux system using GUI tools? Try the following commands.
Hardware information GUI tool
Under Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution, open hardware information GUI tool by clicking on:
System > Preferences > Hardware information
Sample outputs:
On Gnome 3 based distro open settings and click on the details and choose About:
hardinfo – System Information GUI tool
You can install hardinfo with yum command or apt-get command:
$ sudo apt-get install hardinfo
Run it as follows:
$ hardinfo
Sample outputs:
Fig.03 Check graphics card on Linux with hardinfo command
lshw command
The lshw command provides detailed information on the hardware configuration of the machine. You can install it with yum or apt-get command:
# lshw -short
# lshw -short | grep -i --color display
Sample outputs:
/0/100/1/0 display GK104GLM [Quadro K5000M]
OR get detailed information:
# lshw -class display
Sample outputs:
*-display description: VGA compatible controller product: GK104GLM [Quadro K5000M] vendor: NVIDIA Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: a1 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0 resources: irq:16 memory:f5000000-f5ffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f0000000-f1ffffff ioport:e000(size=128) memory:f6000000-f607ffff
A note about Nvidia GPU users with Nvidia binary drivers
Just type the following command to get detailed information about NVIDIA GPU card:
$ nvidia-smi
Sample outputs:
Mon Jan 13 04:08:34 2014 +------------------------------------------------------+ | NVIDIA-SMI 5.319.32 Driver Version: 319.32 | |-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+ | GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC | | Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. | |===============================+======================+======================| | 0 Quadro K5000M Off | 0000:01:00.0 On | N/A | | N/A 41C P8 N/A / N/A | 64MB / 4095MB | 0% Default | +-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Compute processes: GPU Memory | | GPU PID Process name Usage | |=============================================================================| | No running compute processes found | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
We can use GUI tool called nvidia-settings. It is a tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver and give informaion. It operates by communicating with the NVIDIA X driver, querying and updating state as appropriate. This communiction is done via the X extensions. For example, open the terminal app and then type:
$ nvidia-settings
Linux Find Out GPU Information Using the glxinfo
Run the following glxinfo command on Linux to find GPU name, vendor, video card RAM size and more:
$ glxinfo -B
Finding graphics cards on Linux Laptops
Many laptops have two GPUs like integrated Intel and dedicated Nvidia/AMD card. In any case you need to use the lspci command as follows:
sudo lspci -v | more
sudo lspci -v | most
sudo lspci -v | grep -i vga
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile) (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU117M [GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile / Max-Q] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Bus: primary=05, secondary=2d, subordinate=51, sec-latency=0
So I have Hybrid-graphics. It is nothing but two graphics cards on same computer. Typically Laptop comes with two graphic cards with different power consumptions on a single system. In this case I have both Intel and Nvidia GPUs. In such case I can select card using the prime-select command:
prime-select intel
prime-select nvidia
prime-select on-demand
prime-select query
See lspci command man page here for more info and read NVIDIA Optimus and Bumblebee for details about NVidia using hybrid graphics with NVidia’s proprietary driver here.
Conclusion
This page listed various Linux commands to find out graphics card (GPU) using the command line options. Once you know about GPUa desktop or laptop computer has, you can install the correct driver on Linux.
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great :-)
it’s work also for AGP bus ? (like “lsagp” )
Awesome. Just what I needed.
Hi frds im new in ubuntu os. Any one tell me which tv tuner card is suitable for ubuntu 8.04 version and also plz tell me the installation steps for drivers software
Adavance thanks!..
Great – thanks for the help!
That System>Preferences>Hardware Information tool looks nifty… how do I install it?
I looked, and didn’t see it on my menu :(
I am running Jaunty Jackalope 64 bit
In the mean time, I did an lspci and found out this though:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV770 [Radeon HD 4870]
Now, where would I find a linux driver for that card?
(Why do I hear a deafening roar on “The friggin ATI website ya moron!”? OK, ok, I’ll look their, ok? LoL…)
You can download driver from ATI website or see driver CD:
http://support.amd.com/us/
Click on Driver Download
Enter your product Select Linux as os.
OK, so I went there and DL’d the driver, which was a .run file.
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.36&lang=English
Now I can’t get it to work!
What to do?
I double clicked on the package and got this:
Then I changed the character coding to Western (ISO-8859-15):
…without success :(
First, read installation notes . Next, try command to download and start installer:
cd /tmp
wget https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-9-4-x86.x86_64.run
chmod +x ati-driver-installer-9-4-x86.x86_64.run
./ati-driver-installer-9-4-x86.x86_64.run
Note above is 64 bit driver. If you are using 32bit Linux os, download 32bit driver.
It says:
Uninstalling the ATI Linux Proprietary Driver
Uninstalling the ATI Linux Proprietary Driver is dependent on the mode of the
initial installation.
…/snip/…
Package Generation
If the initial installation of the driver was done via the Operating Systems package
management software (RPM, APT, etc.) then please use that package management
software to remove the ATI Proprietary Linux Driver.
Here’s a Q…
I opened up the Synaptic Package Manager and searched for the string:
ATI Linux Proprietary Driver
I came across so many items, it was nauseating! I am too scared to touch anything other than that specific string… And I can’t find it :”(
So, what would it be called exactly? I mean, am I indeed looking for the correct string in the first place???
Done!
I got some more help from elsewhere.
Anyone else that wishes to learn how I installed my driver, please read Legace‘s post.
That link again…
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7245052#post7245052
Mods can please merge the posts, and delete the gibberish a href code I mismanaged.
Thank you
thanks just what i need
hehhe,
just testing.
Good one. Just what I needed.
I have a Pinnacle Tv tuner 110i card on PCI and working with windows, but ubuntu does not recognise nor reads CD supplied with it. How to install this Tv tuner? Pl.help
Excellent! Now why can’t this be done under windows? They call it “plug n’ play”…
how can video adapter installes in linux 5?
thanks
hi….
i got output of lspci in terminal of ubuntu 9.10 as this
VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
now how do is this also installed the same way as ati card is intalled or do i have to something different.?
i wanted to install 3d desktop on ubuntu 9.10. and i found a “how to” which only spoke of ati.
hello..
i have a via chrome video chrome9 hc and i couldnt find the driver for it. i tryed many things but it didnt work. is there anyone who could help here?!
These are extraordinary things
Hi. What I’m using Puppy linux? I’ve tried to input the commands you provided here but it didn’t work :(
THX Master, helped me out a lot!
Thanks!!! This page is extremely helpful. Hardinfo is just what I needed :)
My Laptop has an Intel GPU (Battery last longer) and A dedicate GPU(for games).
When I installed Puppy, it detect the Intel GPU so when I run Puppy whitout plugging the laptop, it works well. When I start my laptop and this one is connect, then the dedicate GPU works and I am not able to see a good image into Puppy Linux… How Puppy can manage or auto detect both GPU???
$ lspci | grep -i --color 'vga|3d|2d'
I should use “egrep” instead simple grep :
$ lspci | egrep -i --color 'vga|3D|2D'
On linux mint I found I had to escape the pipe characters, so this:
$ lspci | grep -i --color 'vga|3d|2d'
becomes this:
lspci | grep -i --color 'vga\|3d\|2d'
This was useful to find out GPU card on my Linux mint. I am using an older System 76 laptop that is given to me my brother-in-law. He got a newer model. So far I am loving it.