C# detect which graphics card drives video

Question

My C# application sits on the embedded box which has Intel motherboard and graphics chipset. ATI graphics card is put on to PCI express. Generally graphics card drives the video, but if ATI card fails then the video comes out from graphics chipset.

I have to detect the failure of ATI graphics card for diagnostic purposes.

Any ideas/sample code on how to do this.

Thanks in advance Raju

Answer 1

This should hopefully get you started.

Add a reference to System.Management, then you can do this:

ManagementObjectSearcher searcher 
     = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_DisplayConfiguration");

    string graphicsCard = string.Empty;
    foreach (ManagementObject mo in searcher.Get())
    {
        foreach (PropertyData property in mo.Properties)
        {
           if (property.Name == "Description")
           {
               graphicsCard = property.Value.ToString();
           }
        }
    }

In my case, graphicsCard is equal to

NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM v1.1)

Answer 2

I'm not a fan of how the selected answer only returns the first video controller. Also, there's no need to loop over all the properties. Just get the ones you need. If CurrentBitsPerPixel is not null, then you're looking at one of the active controllers. I'm using Win32_VideoController as suggested by @bairog, instead of the deprecated Win32_DisplayConfiguration.

ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = 
    new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_VideoController");
foreach (ManagementObject mo in searcher.Get())
{
    PropertyData currentBitsPerPixel = mo.Properties["CurrentBitsPerPixel"];
    PropertyData description = mo.Properties["Description"];
    if (currentBitsPerPixel != null && description != null)
    {
        if (currentBitsPerPixel.Value != null)
            System.Console.WriteLine(description.Value);
    }
}

My machine has 3 video controllers. The first one is not active (ShoreTel). The second one is active, but is not the video card (Desktop Authority). The third one is my NVidia. This code will print out both the DA controller and the NVidia controller.

Answer 3

Promoted answer works only for single video card system. When I have ATI and Nvidia cards - WMI query returns ATI even if that monitor is plugged into Nvidia card, dxdiag shows Nvidia and games runs on that card (usage).

The only way I could determine right video card was using SlimDX to create DX device and examine what card it used. However that .dll weights over 3Mb.

var graphicsCardName = new Direct3D().Adapters[0].Details.Description;

Answer 4

Your question isn't entirely clear, so I'm not sure if the follwing idea will help or not.

Perhaps something very simple would suffice:

If the two graphics cards run different resolutions check the monitor resolution using:

System.Windows.Forms.SystemInformation.PrimaryMonitorSize

Similarly, if one card supports more than one monitor, check the number of monitors using SystemInformation.MonitorCount.

Answer 5

I tried all the approaches in this question but none gives me a correct answer. However I found it possible to get your current using the Win32_DisplayControllerConfiguration class. Although according to MSDN this class is obsolete, it's the only one returning a correct answer:

using System;
using System.Management;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace WMISample
{
    public class MyWMIQuery
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            try
            {
                ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = 
                    new ManagementObjectSearcher("root\\CIMV2", 
                    "SELECT * FROM Win32_DisplayControllerConfiguration"); 

                foreach (ManagementObject queryObj in searcher.Get())
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("-----------------------------------    ");
                    Console.WriteLine("Win32_DisplayControllerConfiguration instance");
                    Console.WriteLine("-----------------------------------");
                    Console.WriteLine("Name: {0}", queryObj["Name"]);
            }
            }
            catch (ManagementException e)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("An error occurred while querying for WMI data: " + e.Message);
            }
        }
    }
}

(Code generated by WMI Code Creator, a great tool if you are messing with WMI.)

This gives GeForce GTX 1080 on my Windows 10 (RS2) + Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 system.

Answer 6

Sometimes I need to switch between the Nvidia GPU and onboard GPU. To know which is connected to the monitor, I use the property MinRefreshRate. It works reliably for me, not CurrentBitsPerPixel.

public static void UpdateActiveGpu()
    {
        ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_VideoController");
        foreach (ManagementObject mo in searcher.Get())
        {
            PropertyData minRefreshRate = mo.Properties["MinRefreshRate"];
            PropertyData description = mo.Properties["Description"];

            if (minRefreshRate != null && description != null && minRefreshRate.Value != null)
            {
                Global.Instance.activeGpu = description.Value.ToString();
                break;
            }
        }
    }