User:Shaellawen/Identify hardware from dxdiag

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In order to identify hardware, the PCI identifiers are needed. They look like this in the DxDiag report: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2A42&SUBSYS_02771028&REV_07

The VEN_ and DEV_ values make up a hardware identification key, so the above translates into 8086:2A42.

There is a PCI ID database maintained by SourceForge at http://pciids.sourceforge.net.

To look up this device, visit the website above and click on PCI Devices then the first digit of the ID above.

Common PCI ID's
There are few manufacturers of video cards, so chances are the manufacturers are Nvidia, AMD, ATI, or Intel. Their ID's are:
 * 1002: ATI
 * 1022: AMD
 * 10DE: Nvidia
 * 8086: Intel

So at a glance you can tell if you have an Nvidia video card or not.

Subsystems
The SUBSYS_ section contains an identifier of the manufacturer of a particular device (i.e. the whole card, not just the chip on it). The subsystem is a reversed pair of 4 character identifiers. The manufacturer is the second part. For example, SUBSYS_02771028 means the part (system board in this case) was made by Dell (ID 1028).

This can be handy to find out if the particular version of a card has special features like Asus 3D glasses on an Nvidia card.

A subsystem of 00000000 means the card is a manufacturer reference design or may be an engineering sample.