dxdiag Report Interpreter

How this reads your output

DxDiag produces an 800-line report about the machine's graphics stack, and four lines in it usually explain the problem: what graphics device is being used, how old its driver is, how much memory the machine has, and whether Windows flagged anything itself. Those are extracted and judged. Driver age carries the most weight, because graphics drivers are updated monthly and a stale one is the single most common cause of games failing to launch or running far below what the hardware should manage. An integrated graphics chip appearing on a machine that also has a discrete card is called out separately — that is applications launching against the wrong device, which looks exactly like slow hardware and costs nothing to fix.

What the results mean

Driver date

When the installed display driver was built. Anything over a year old is genuinely behind, and vendors release monthly.

Integrated graphics

A chip sharing system memory rather than a card with its own. If the machine has both, seeing the integrated one here means applications are using it.

Problems reported

Lines DxDiag flagged itself. Windows already detected a fault, and it is the first thing to resolve.

Display memory

Graphics memory as the report states it. On integrated graphics this figure is carved out of system RAM rather than being separate.

Common problems and fixes

It did not recognise my report

Use DxDiag's "Save All Information" button and paste the whole text file. The display section is two thirds of the way down and is easy to miss in a partial copy.

It shows integrated graphics but I have a card

That is the finding. Set the application to the high-performance GPU in Windows graphics settings — laptops default to integrated for battery life, and games inherit that default.

The driver is old but Windows says it is up to date

Windows Update ships graphics drivers months behind and sometimes replaces a newer one with an older certified build. Install from the GPU vendor's own download page.

Frequently asked questions

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