Any user interested in buying a graphics card wants to gather as much information as possible before spending their money, but the real behavior of the hardware and many of its internal functions are only known once it's installed in the computer. GPU-Z is the main identification tool on the market, but today we're going to review GPU Caps Viewer, which can detect a wide range of details and comes with several benchmarks.
Beyond GPU-Z
Many users are convinced that the processor has lost relevance compared to graphics cards. The demands of 4K video and virtual reality have led us to buy true monsters that spit out frames per second as if the world were ending tomorrow. Official drivers have reached such a level that they can be considered “dedicated operating systems”. And the amount of data to evaluate is enormous: architecture type, frequencies, TDP, fillrate, bus width, extensions, CUDA-OpenGL-DirectX-Vulkan support... the list goes on.
What GPU Caps Viewer Offers
If you need to know all that and more, you can download a copy of GPU Caps Viewer. The information is divided into seven tabs, and includes the general specifications of the graphics card, its temperature, driver version, complete list of OpenGL extensions, CUDA compatibility (if it's Nvidia hardware), and parameters for both OpenCL and Vulkan. In the 3D Demos section you'll find more than twenty different benchmarks, each with its specific level of demand, and if allowed, advanced options to change the resolution.
Latest Updates and Availability
The latest version of GPU Caps Viewer added support for new graphics modules in laptops, such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, the Intel HD Graphics 630 (the GT2 variant found in Kaby Lake processors), and the AMD Radeon R7 M300 series. GPU Caps Viewer is free, its download is about seven megabytes (13.5 MB uncompressed), and it has a portable version for added convenience. It still has some detection details to work out regarding Vulkan and fan speeds (as long as the graphics card isn't passive), but its overall performance is very good.
