gpu-detector

Cross-platform GPU detection library for Python. Detects NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Apple, and other GPUs on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Detects VRAM where the OS exposes it.

Most existing Python GPU detection tools are thin wrappers around nvidia-smi and only work for NVIDIA GPUs. gpu-detector was built to fill that gap: it detects all GPUs in a system, regardless of vendor, using the best available method on each platform.

Usage

from gpu_detector import detect, GPUInfo

gpus: list[GPUInfo] = detect()
for gpu in gpus:
    print(gpu)

Or from the command line:

gpu-detector

GPUInfo dataclass

Each detected GPU is returned as a GPUInfo instance with the following fields:

Field	Type	Description
name	str	GPU name as reported by the system (e.g. "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090")
vendor	str | None	Canonical vendor name: "NVIDIA", "AMD", "Intel", "Apple", "Matrox", "ASPEED", "VIA", "Moore Threads", "Zhaoxin", "VMware", "Red Hat", "QEMU/Bochs", or "VirtualBox"
memory_mb	int | None	Dedicated VRAM in megabytes. Populated for all vendors where the OS exposes it; None for integrated GPUs with shared memory.
driver_version	str | None	Driver version string, if available.
device_id	str | None	PCI device ID (e.g. "10de:2620"), PNP device ID (Windows), or platform-specific identifier.
source	str | None	Detection method that produced this entry (e.g. "lspci:-nn", "nvidia-smi", "powershell:Get-CimInstance Win32_VideoController").

__str__ output

print(gpu)
# → "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (NVIDIA) 24576 MB"

Supported vendors

Physical GPUs

Vendor	PCI IDs
NVIDIA	0x10de
AMD / ATI	0x1002, 0x1022
Intel	0x8086
Apple	0x106b
Matrox	0x102b
ASPEED	0x1a03
VIA	0x1106
Moore Threads	0x1ed5
Zhaoxin	0x1d17

Virtual GPUs

Vendor	PCI IDs
VMware SVGA	0x15ad
Red Hat virtio-gpu	0x1af4
QEMU / Bochs	0x1234
VirtualBox	0x80ee

Detection methods by platform

Linux

1. lspci -nn — primary detection; identifies GPUs by PCI class.
2. /sys/class/drm — fallback when lspci is unavailable.
3. nvidia-smi — enriches NVIDIA entries with VRAM, driver version, and accurate names.
4. DRM sysfs VRAM — reads /sys/class/drm/card*/device/mem_info_vram_total for AMD (amdgpu) and Intel Arc (xe/i915) VRAM.

Windows

1. PowerShell (Get-CimInstance Win32_VideoController) — primary; returns name, AdapterRAM, driver version, and PNP device ID for all vendors.
2. WMIC — fallback using the same WMI class.

macOS

1. system_profiler -json — primary; returns model, VRAM, vendor, and device ID.
2. system_profiler (plain text) — fallback parsing of the text output.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome! Whether it's adding support for a new vendor, improving detection on a specific platform, or fixing a bug, contributions of all sizes are appreciated.

Accuracy

This library is developed with limited access to operating systems and GPU hardware. Detection results may not be accurate for all configurations. If you encounter incorrect or missing information on your system, please open an issue with your GPU model, OS, and the output you received. It helps improve detection for everyone.