How to Determine If the GPU Is Integrated or Discrete? (2024)

A GPU is a computer chip used to process images on your computer screen. There are two types of graphics cards: integrated graphics cards and dedicated graphics cards. How to determine if the GPU is integrated or discrete on your computer? This MiniTool post answers you and shows you the difference between the two graphics cards.

How to Check If the GPU Is Integrated or Dedicated on Windows

GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit. It performs calculations related to graphics and video processing to render content smoothly and quickly on the computer screen. To determine if the GPU is integrated or discrete helps you to understand how a game or application performs on your computer.

It is easy to figure out the GPU type on your computer. You can keep reading to check without third-party software.

In the Windows search box, type Device Manager and hit Enter to open the window. Expand the Display adapters option to check the listed devices. If there is only one adapter, “Intel HD Graphics”, you have the integrated graphics card.

How to check if you have a dedicated GPU? When you find more than one device displayed under the Display adapters, such as Intel HD Graphics and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, it indicates your computer has a discrete GPU. For an Intel-based system, the Intel HD Graphics is likely to be the integrated chip and the other device is the dedicated graphics processor.

If your computer runs an AMD-based system, it is not that easy to check if the GPU is integrated or dedicated on Windows as AMD provides both integrated and dedicated graphics cards. You can check the model of the AMD processor in Device Manager and figure out the type of this chip from the AMD processor specifications.

Integrated Graphics Card VS Dedicated Graphics Card

What Is an Integrated Graphics Card

An integrated graphics is built into the computer’s motherboard. It shares the same chip with the CPU. Since the GPU and CPU are on the same chip, they constrain each other to a certain extent.

Most modern processors are equipped with integrated graphics. To ensure the potential performance of the CPU, it generally limits the function of the GPU. If you use the computer only for daily use and work, integrated GPU is enough to satisfy your requirements.

What Is a Dedicated Graphics Card

A dedicated graphics card is completely separate from the CPU. It uses another slot to store the graphics card. As the CPU and GPU are separated, they are not limited by each other. Additionally, the discrete graphics card has its own memory that allows it to store and access saved data quickly.

Compared with the integrated graphics card, the discrete graphics card doesn’t share the system memory; thus, it could provide a better performance. For those who need to handle heavy image tasks or require high performance of their computers for gaming or image creation, dedicated graphics cards can be an optimal choice.

Further Reading: Improve Computer Performance & Safeguard Data

GPU matters a lot for the computer as it saves data and offloads tasks from your CPU. However, the graphics card may have various errors, such as GPU missing from the Task Manager, GPU keeping crashing, etc.

To avoid data loss caused by hardware issues, you can back up important data in time using computer utilities or third-party backup software. If, unfortunately, your data is lost, you should recover it as soon as possible to ensure the largest successful data recovery rate. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is specifically designed to recover files lost in various situations. The free edition provides 1GB of free data recovery capacity.

You can optimize your computer performance by freeing up RAM with MiniTool System Booster. This software allows you to disable unwanted startup programs, delete junk files, increase Internet speed, etc. If you need it, you can get this tool by clicking on the download button below.

Bottom Line

After reading this post, you are supposed to know how to determine if the GPU is integrated or discrete. Furthermore, you can have a simple understanding of what integrated and dedicated graphics cards are. Hope this post has useful information for you.