Solved I need to find out what graphics card I have.

~SOLVED~ If you tried everything to get your graphics card to show up on Windows 8 (instead of the default driver) but nothing works, refer to the very last post in this thread for how I solved the problem. ~SOLVED~

I'll post this in points to make it simple so hopefully nobody skims past this issue.

1. My computer is self-built from a bunch of other computers. "Frankenstein" I call her.
- It has good parts, but some names of the hardware is unknown to me.
2. I have just upgraded to Windows 8 today from a barely operating Windows XP with driver issues (they got lost in the building process).
3. I have an ASUS Motherboard, that came with an Alienware Aurora.
4. I know what kind of graphics card I have.
5. I cannot install new drivers, because they're either incompatible with Windows 8 or I don't know the exact graphics card model.

It is an ATI Radeon HD graphics card. It's somewhere in the 4xxx series. When I first installed it on my old Gateway (it was crem-de-la-crem back then) the CCC had a... woman? I believe her to be called "Sapphire", but I haven't found a capable graphics card driver with this series (on Windows 8).

The model is not on the graphics card, if it is, it is not visible and I am not removing it from my motherboard. Not that I would need to, there's no name marked.

How can I find out the name of the card? And once that is done, how can I upgrade my graphics card driver? It's running off the default system driver and I've read all the threads that deal with it, but none of them work because they boil down to the problem at hand.

All help is appreciated and I will regularly check this thread to post, etc. Thank you.

PS: DXDiag is no help. There's only five tabs, and barely any information (which is all wrong, it still thinks I have an AMD Processor instead of my ASUS).

Do you really *need* to upgrade your graphics driver? The reason I ask is because this machine I'm on at the moment also has a Radeon 4000-series graphics card, and I know for a fact that installing the AMD legacy Catalyst drivers for Windows 8 breaks a lot of the Metro apps. The only reason you'd really want to upgrade the Microsoft driver that Windows provides is if you need OpenGL support. (In which case, I have a work-around...)

Here's a link to the drivers you're looking for:


AMD Catalyst


But again, I would strongly advise you NOT to install them. The Netflix app, for example, will hang at 97% when you try to play a video, and a few other Metro apps will either exhibit rendering issues or not run at all.


If you do absolutely need OpenGL, download and install the legacy drivers, reboot, then go to the device manager, click on Display Adapters, double-click on "ATI Radeon HD...", click the Driver tab, then click on ROLL BACK DRIVER. What you'll find is that the old Microsoft driver returns (and the Metro apps will now work correctly again) - BUT - you'll also have full OpenGL support, as well as the Catalyst Control Center. (Although why anybody would want to use that bloated CCC p.o.s. is beyond me.

NaySayer said:

Here's a link to the drivers you're looking for:


AMD Catalyst


But again, I would strongly advise you NOT to install them. The Netflix app, for example, will hang at 97% when you try to play a video, and a few other Metro apps will either exhibit rendering issues or not run at all.


If you do absolutely need OpenGL, download and install the legacy drivers, reboot, then go to the device manager, click on Display Adapters, double-click on "ATI Radeon HD...", click the Driver tab, then click on ROLL BACK DRIVER. What you'll find is that the old Microsoft driver returns (and the Metro apps will now work correctly again) - BUT - you'll also have full OpenGL support, as well as the Catalyst Control Center. (Although why anybody would want to use that bloated CCC p.o.s. is beyond me.

Click to expand...

Yes, I do need to update my graphics driver because it does not recognize my graphics card.

1. I need to find out how to figure out the name of the card for me to install the driver first.
2. Without updating the driver, the computer will not be able to use the graphics card, and is super terrible at even running Solitaire 3D.

So yeah, unfortunately that through its problems, it's imperative that I install the drivers.

----**** MICROSOFT DISPLAY DRIVER is only found and in use ****----

Thank you, I shall try the display driver you linked me to and edit my post below to tell whether it worked at all or not.

----****---- EDIT ----****----

I cannot update my driver because...

1. I don't know what the graphics card name is. That's what I came here to find out. So this problem is true.
2. When I try to update the graphics card I think it is, Radeon HD 4570, it says "The driver selected for this device does not support this version of windows."

The driver I downloaded from the link in your post must not be x64-bit?

HeirApparent said:

The driver I downloaded from the link in your post must not be x64-bit?

Click to expand...

Look at the link. It's supposed to be for both 32 and 64 bit OSes.

I'm not sure what the best way is to ID the card. One idea is to go into Device Manager and check the hardware ID for your display adapter. For example: if I plug the (shortest) hardware ID from that screen for mine, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1180&CC_0300, into Google, the result of the search is that my graphics card is a GTX680. (That's correct.)

HeirApparent,


If you have a graphics card with an ATI chipset, it shouldn't make any difference whatsoever who manufactured the card... Either the legacy drivers I posted (for HD4xxx and below) or the current Catalyst drivers (for HD5000 and above) will auto-detect your card and install the appropriate driver. Now, if you have a truly ancient card like an R7500, say, you're probably stuck with the Microsoft driver, unless you can find a Vista/Windows 7 driver to try installing in compatibility mode.

NaySayer said:

HeirApparent,


If you have a graphics card with an ATI chipset, it shouldn't make any difference whatsoever who manufactured the card... Either the legacy drivers I posted (for HD4xxx and below) or the current Catalyst drivers (for HD5000 and above) will auto-detect your card and install the appropriate driver. Now, if you have a truly ancient card like an R7500, say, you're probably stuck with the Microsoft driver, unless you can find a Vista/Windows 7 driver to try installing in compatibility mode.

Click to expand...

Well I'm not stupid, I know my graphics card is not ancient. The problem didn't lie with the graphics card, however, the problem was the graphics card.

The computer didn't recognize it even existed because....!

1) It was in crossfire with a lesser graphics card. It only recognizes the top graphics card, which happened to be a lovely old ATI Radeon 1300x or something like that.
2) I forgot that I inserted the old Radeon graphics card in the first slot just for testing the computer really quick after building it, and the ATI Radeon HD 4650 was in the second slot.
- Yes, I found out the name of the better card. The box showed up in an old tote full of computer games.
- I didn't realize the better card was in the second slot, because the older card looks much better than the new one does... haha?
3) I had to remove the old card and insert the new card in the first slot. After such, the computer recognized the ATI Radeon HD 4650 and all was well. I don't even have to update the drivers. Runs great.

The lesson learned here is; if it doesn't recognize it.

1) It's broken or the computer has an issue.
2) It's accidentally in the second slot as a crossfire for a lesser card that isn't compatible.
3) It's just not plugged in properly (or it's in the wrong slot).

SOLVED~

Thanks for anyone trying to assist, fortunately that through all the proposed fixes that DO NOT work in this case, it wasn't an issue with the computer or Windows 8 at all.

Glad you got it resolved! Based on what you said when you tried to install the Catalyst drivers I suspected it was an issue with the card itself or its configuration.