Find out more information about. Computer information. How to find out and where to look. Viewing the main characteristics of a computer in CPU-Z

How to find out the characteristics of your computer or laptop? Very simple. Moreover, there are many ways to view the technical parameters of a PC or laptop. First, Windows 7, 8, and 10 have 4 built-in tools that you can use to find out the properties of your computer. Secondly, there are special programs that show absolutely all information about a PC or laptop. Therefore, below will be considered the most simple ways, with the help of which you can find out what kind of video card you have, RAM, processor, etc.

Why is this needed? Most often, you need to know the characteristics of your laptop or PC to:

• installation of games (in order to understand whether they are suitable in your case or not);
• updating drivers for the video card (you need to know its model);
• buying a new random access memory(it is recommended to set the same bar that you already have);
• sales of an old PC or laptop (to provide the buyer with all the information he needs).

You can view the properties of your computer without special programs and utilities. Fortunately, Windows itself has many simple tools for this. Let's start with them.

The methods described below are shown on the example of Windows 7. But you can also use them in Windows 8 and 10.

System information

So, to find out the characteristics of a computer in Windows 7:

As you can see, the main characteristics are listed in these two tabs. If you need other parameters, look for them in the remaining sections.

Control Panel

The second method is also very simple. To see the characteristics on a computer in Windows 7, go to Start - Control Panel - System (or right-click on the "My Computer" shortcut and go to "Properties").

A new window will appear, where your processor, the amount of installed RAM, version and Windows type... However, the information is again incomplete.

Device Manager

Another way to view the properties of a computer on Windows 7 is through the Device Manager. To open it, go to Start - Control Panel - Device Manager.

The next window will appear, where you can view the required technical parameters. For example, a processor, video adapter (this is the name of a video card), etc.

DirectX Diagnostic Tool

And the last way to see the properties of a laptop or PC with built-in Windows tools:

All of these methods have one common drawback - they show too little information about the PC. Plus, the parameters are scattered across different tabs (you have to look for them).

Therefore, below are 3 more useful utilities with which you can view the system characteristics of your computer or laptop.

Programs for viewing PC parameters

I note right away that such utilities work on all operating systems - Windows 7, 8, 10, and even XP. In addition, they do not care what brand of laptop you have: Asus, Acer, Samsung, Dell, HP Pavilion, Lenovo, etc. In a word, these programs are universal. Therefore, you can safely use them on any computer or laptop.

Piliform Speccy

Speccy is one of best programs to view the specifications of the PC. After all, she:

• free (there is a portable version);
• supports different computers, laptops and netbooks;
• completely in Russian.

And most importantly - this utility shows everything specifications PC:

• model, frequency, temperature of the processor;
• OS version;
• the amount and frequency of RAM;
• complete information about the motherboard;
• video card model;
• monitor resolution;
• full name of the hard disk and its size.

And all this in one tab. And if necessary, you can get more detailed information about the components by opening the desired section in the left menu.

AIDA64 Extreme

Another great program with which you can see the characteristics of a laptop or computer. It is paid, but there is a 30-day trial period (for most cases, this period is sufficient). Plus there is a portable version (no installation required).

Shows absolutely all PC parameters down to the smallest detail. For example, if you want to buy additional RAM, then in AIDA64 you can find out everything about it: full name, frequency, etc. Similar information is displayed on the processor, video card, monitor.

By the way, among other things, this program also shows the temperature of the components (in the "Sensors" tab). This is very useful when your PC or laptop suddenly starts to glitch badly, and you need to check if the processor or video card is warming up.

PC Wizard

And the last program on this list with which you can see the characteristics of your computer in Windows 10, 8, 7 - PC Wizard. In terms of functionality, it is one of the most powerful and is on a par with the paid AIDA64. It also shows absolutely all system characteristics about your PC.

The only negative is that he thinks too long. The program slows down a little, responds slowly to user action (sometimes you have to wait 10 seconds), and this is annoying. Although if it is rarely used, then this drawback does not play any role.

Instead of a conclusion

That's all. Now you know where to see the characteristics of your computer in Windows 7, 8 and 10, as well as 3 excellent programs that will show the necessary information on all components. Therefore, if you suddenly need to find out the exact model of the video card, the properties of the RAM or the processor temperature, just choose the appropriate method.

Introduction

What are all these utilities for displaying information about the system for? Each more or less advanced user will tell you in detail about the configuration of his computer. But what about nontrivial things like drive mode (is DMA enabled)? Or frequency system bus(does it make sense to buy faster memory - does the processor operate at higher system bus frequencies)? In addition, a very common situation is when you remotely consult your more knowledgeable friend (for example, about the same upgrade), and he asks you to specify the exact chipset and revision of your motherboard.

In all of the above cases, utilities that display detailed information about the system can help significantly. You may ask - what's wrong with the regular "Device Manager" included in Windows?


Basically, it can provide answers to many questions regarding the configuration of your system. But the utilities considered today appear for a reason - the user needs a convenient interface, a centralized supply of information (which is desirable to obtain in an accessible form), as well as "tasty" additional plugins (for example, tests for processor and RAM performance). In all honesty - do you know offhand where all the variety of data about the system is stored (after all, they are scattered in different corners of it)? And in utilities - "everything in one bottle" ... In general, in the auto industry there is such a thing as "tuning" - people turn to a car-studio to improve convenience and additional features... In principle, some parallels can be drawn with our case.

The criterion for the subjective assessment of today's test subjects: free delivery (the absence of adware and spyware was the main condition for getting into the list), stable work. Well, if the interface is also convenient, and additional modules or plugins are available, then you cannot do without the recommendations of such a program for installation on your computer. And one more important point - we will test under the Windows Vista operating system - we will check the readiness of all applicants for professional suitability in the environment of a new operating system from Microsoft.

I will make a reservation right away - I will not meticulously describe all the capabilities of the utilities, but will focus on conveying my own impressions of getting to know their functionality (in addition, screenshots will tell much more). If you are interested, then detailed specifications and reference documentation are always available on the project sites, the addresses of which are given at the beginning of each of the descriptions.


Program website: http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php
The developer: CPUID

The author of the PC Wizard program is familiar to many of us from his famous CPU-Z utility. Both products have been developed for over 10 years, and there is no reason to doubt the author's professionalism.

The distribution kit of the program takes about two and a half megabytes in the archive (there is also a version with an installation module). In the case of an archive, after unpacking the program is immediately ready to work (it's nice that it is localized into Russian), a few seconds after analyzing the system and polling the sensors, you can go to study the details.

The program interface has five sections: "Hardware", "Configuration", "System Files", "Resources" and "Test".

"Iron"... Information is given (mostly exhaustive) about all components of the system, be it the motherboard, processor or RAM modules. Take, for example, a processor - you will learn not only its characteristics, but also the current temperature, core voltage, load level, etc. What more could you ask for?

At the bottom of the window there are two tabs "Information" and "Drivers". In the first - it is given detailed description specifications, parameters and their values, etc. In the second, information about the drivers is given. Not everything is perfect here - for a number of components PC Wizard was unable to determine the driver data (for example, I did not display information about the printer drivers, USB controller, and even the ATI Radeon 2900XT video card). There are minor translation flaws - for example, the item "Drivers" in "Hardware" was more correctly designated as "Drives". In addition, a number of section titles were left without translation.
The Voltage, Temperature and Fans section deserves special attention - it summarizes the information received from various system sensors.

"Configuration"... It contains information about the operating system (version, serial number, user, etc.), web browser, control panel, desktop, processes and threads, dynamic libraries (with decryption), OLE records, software products Microsoft, installed TrueType fonts, updates (for some reason this item was empty for me, apparently it only displays information about the Service Pack). There is also a section installed programs, information about startup applications, file type associations with applications, DirectX components, security information, media components, performance statistics, etc.
This section is a little "damp" - in some places there is no data, somewhere there are flaws (I displayed "winter" time, and in the decoding in the Information panel, the correct, summer time was indicated). In general, the author still has something to polish.

"System files"... This section centrally displays the information contained in system files Boot.ini, System.ini, Win.ini, etc.

"Resources"... List of busy interrupts, channels direct access to memory, input / output ports, memory resources. Some points did not work for me - an empty form was issued.

"Test"... This section contains a number of tests for your system so that you can evaluate its performance. You will be able to evaluate the overall performance with the ability to save the results (and comparison after the upgrade).

Most of the tests are synthetic, there are variations in the results. If you wish, you can compare your results with the data stored in the PC Wizard database. This can be useful for identifying cases where your system is not properly optimized. I liked it very much next moment- when comparing your results with benchmarks from the database - you use the slider to adjust the transparency of the window and then overlay it on the results graph to visually compare the chart bars.

The set includes tests of the speed of reading and writing to the cache of the first and second levels of the processor, the speed of operation hard disk and optical drive, RAM. There is even a test of a video card for 3D performance, but it is completely primitive. I would also mention the MP3 compression test, but you need an audio CD for it.

Summary: impressions from PC Wizard 2007 are very positive. It looks like a large beautiful house with many rooms, although a few are not yet finished, but what is there is impressive. Unfortunately, there are some flaws in the localization into Russian.

SIW (System Information for Windows)

Program website: http://www.gtopala.com/
The developer: Gabriel Topala

Romanian programmer Gabriel Topala presents to our court the SIW utility (abbreviation for System Information for Windows). The utility interface will display the following screenshot:

On the left, there is a tree structure of the components for which information is displayed. The "roots" of the tree are the Software, Hardware and Network sections. In addition, there is also a Tools menu, which contains useful additions. So, first things first ...

Software... Information about the operating system (kernel version, serial number, time since the last boot, etc.); updates (patches from Microsoft); list of programs (names, exact versions, installation date); applications - system and other (name and size of the file to be launched, vendor, directory path, creation date, attributes, etc.); licenses (list of serial numbers detected licensed programs); regional settings; file associations with applications; list of running applications; list of loaded dynamic libraries; list of file system drivers and kernel-level drivers; list of programs loaded with Windows; list of installed multimedia codecs; list of ActiveX components; list open files(with the names of applications and processes that opened them); a list of passwords from autocomplete, etc.
In addition to standard information components, I will note here such useful things as displayed serial numbers of licensed applications and a list of passwords from auto-complete forms - for especially forgetful users, of course (and not for malicious purposes).

Hardware... System information (Windows Vista performance index, disk space, physical RAM and its load, virtual memory, paging file size, registry size, etc.); motherboard (manufacturer, model, version, serial number, chipset, devices on the board, memory slots, etc.); sensors (information about the temperature of the processor cores and the temperature of the hard drive); BIOS (version, release date, developer, size and specifications); information about the processor (name, code name, process technology, platform, frequency, multiplier, cache, instructions, etc.); devices (in principle, this section practically gives information from the Manager Windows devices which is even structured similarly); PCI (information about devices using this bus); system slots; network adapters(name, manufacturer, speed, MAC-address, parameters of the established connection); memory (information about installed memory modules - type, frequency, size, baud rate, error correction, etc.); video (information on video card, monitor, supported resolutions, DirectX version); drives (comprehensive information on hard drives, optical drives, removable USB drives, etc.); logical drives(common space, free space, type of file system, device type, bus, etc.); ports (serial and parallel, USB, modem); battery (in the case of a laptop); printers (printers installed on the system, name, attributes, capabilities, port connection, etc.).
In my case, the information from the sensors is not as complete as we would like - for example, the processor temperature was absent (instead of it, the temperature of each of the two cores was indicated separately, and for some reason it turned out to be five degrees below room temperature), and there was also no cooler rotation speed processor. I also note a minus in the display of information on the video card - it is issued in a raw, unformatted (for better readability) form. Incidentally, this is not an isolated case.

Network... Network information (computer name, name working group, socket version, IP address, DNS servers, etc. - similar to the information given by the "ipconfig / all" command); additional information (external IP, country, longitude and latitude of the location, Internet service provider, running servers, information on NetBIOS, etc.); Search network environment; open ports (protocol, application, state, local and remote address, description); general access (local resources "shared" by you); remote connections, network (search network resources local network).
I liked this section, especially " Additional Information", for which, by the way, you need to connect to external network resources.

Useful tools

SIW includes several useful utilities, we will discuss some of them in this section.

Change of MAC address.

Actually, it allows you to change the MAC address. Use with caution - if your ISP authorization is tied, among other things, to the MAC address, you will run into problems.

Eureka!

This module allows you to display the password hidden behind the "asterisks" - for example, in the account field with auto-complete password or in the mail client. In my case (Windows Vista) the module could not figure out either the password behind the asterisks in the mail client, or the password in the auto-complete form Internet Explorer- apparently, Eureka! works maximum under Windows XP.

Cracking password... This module allows you to extract information from .PWL files for Windows 9x operating systems.

Network traffic.

A simple module that displays a graph of the activity of a network connection. It is useful for determining real speed access or tracking suspicious network activity.

Allows you to turn off or restart the computer (with forced closing of applications) after a certain amount of time (in seconds). It can be useful for limiting the time of work at the computer of other users (primarily children) - provided, of course, that you have a password set in the BIOS.

Summary: Not a bad utility, deserves a solid four, but a number of areas need work. It is interesting, first of all, by the additional instruments included in the composition.


Program website: http://www.alexnolan.net/software/sysspec.htm
The developer: Alex Nolan

The application is one and only executable file, and this immediately wins my sympathy. How will it be further? And then - at launch, an interface of this kind opens in front of us:

This information window is basic and always returns to the interface display. You get access to the components both from the graphical toolbar and from the drop-down text menus. In the case of the graphical panel, some buttons have access to additional functions - through the drop-down icons when you click on the black arrows on the right.

Let's go through the presented "information buttons". Each window displayed by clicking on them, by the way, has items for updating information and printing it, which can be convenient in some cases.

Personal... Computer owner; operating system build number; system uptime since the last boot; default printer; the serial number of the operating system license; .NET Framework Libraries version etc.
I must say that some fields were not filled in for me - for example, the serial number of the hard disk, the original installation path, etc.

Memory... The physical amount of RAM and the available (free) amount; the size of the paging file and its available space; virtual memory sizes; channel width; frequency, etc.

Display... Display information - adapter name, chipset, RAM onboard, graphics resolution, font information.
My ATI graphics card For some reason, the utility did not recognize the Radeon 2900XT in this module.

Drive... Disk name; file system type; volume serial number; size and free space; the number of bytes in the sector and the number of sectors in the cluster; the total number of clusters and the number of free clusters; system "flags"; information from S.M.A.R.T.-area.
There is also a CD / DVD Information menu item - displays information about the optical drive (manufacturer; model; firmware version; description; drive letter; status; list of possibilities for reading and writing).

Cpu... Processor name; family; manufacturer; serial number; frequency; voltage; L2 cache size; capabilities and command sets, etc.
I could not determine the frequency at which the second-level cache works. The CPU button when "expanding" gives one more option - displaying a small window with a graph of the CPU resource utilization.

Internet... Internet connection status; start page in Internet Explorer; default directory for saving files; list of recently visited sites; some flags in browser settings.
A bit of a messy section, in which I have not identified the installed search bar from Google under Search Bar.

Programs... A list of installed programs is displayed, slightly more extensive than the Add or Remove Programs window in Windows XP (or Programs and Features in Windows Vista). Program name, version, manufacturer's website, phone number technical support, installation location on disk, installation source, vendor, path to Readme files, path to uninstaller file, etc. Separately, I would like to note the ability to quickly go to the website of the application manufacturer using the Website button and the colorful Delete Entry button, which allows you to delete an unnecessary entry from the displayed list of installed programs (it is useful in case of failures that leave information about the program after its complete removal).

A simple user will be scared, but hard-core system administrators will feel like a fish in water. The utility displays information in the following categories: NDIS Info, System Info, System Accounts, User Accounts, Share Info, Network Connections, Network Adapters, Adapters Configuration, System Processes, Computer System, Display Info, System Settings, System Services, System Devices, Logical Disks, Serial Info, Proxy Settings.

In general, despite the output of information in a raw form, you can still find its advantages - the information output (in particular, useful information about certain settings of the operating system or device drivers) is very interesting. My utility could not give information about network connections(most likely due to incomplete compatibility with Windows Vista).

Summary: Still, it is obvious that FreeSysInfo is a "piece" that is part of complex network audit packages. Here we see a minimum of friendliness towards the end user and the issuance of raw information. The previous subjects had the necessary data - they were immediately in sight, here you have to rummage through the displayed list with technical information and find the information you need, moreover "raw" (for example, in the "country" field you will see not Russia, but "code 7", search for yourself by the code, etc.). In general, the target audience of the project is advanced users and system administrators.


Program website: http://www.xtort.net/xtort-software/xpsyspad/
The developer: Kenny Heimbuch (xtort.net)

The distribution is a little less than 800 KB and requires installation after downloading. We reviewed version 7.9 of the XP Syspad utility. After installation, the following window appears in front of us, in fact, copying the task manager window with information about running processes:

Further, navigation is carried out by the titles of the lists of menu commands: Admin, Control Panel, Directories, My Menus, Network, Programs, System, Settings, Help.

I will not list all the contents of these categories, I will only say that again we are faced with a situation when the developer did not begin to invent a bicycle, but decided to simply place within the interface of one utility links to many components, information modules and tools for setting up the operating room. Windows systems... It is important that XP Syspad is "minimized" in the System Tray and is available from there at any second.

You can launch regional settings, view user accounts, delve into the Control Panel items, quickly switch to usually difficult to access (read - in a few mouse clicks with a careful peering into a large list of folders) directories and menu items, clear the web browser cache, view the address e-mail client book, find out the IP address, call the calculator, open / close the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive tray, copy floppy disks, display a list installed drivers, etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg - in total, the utility provides centralized access to about two hundred standard functions of the operating system.

There are also some nice little additions - like the ability to display the IP address, serial number of Windows and Office, etc.

Unfortunately, information about the hardware of the system is not encouraging - for example, what the data about the processor looks like:

Not too friendly and informative, right? Some of the menu items do not work (some incompatibility with Windows Vista is obvious, when working under which XP Syspad noticeably "slowed down" for me), so if I recommend this product, then first of all - Windows users XP, which, in fact, warns about the very name of the utility.

Summary: XP Syspad provides centralized access to components, information modules and settings of the Windows operating system, "sitting" icon in the system tray. Full-fledged and comprehensive information about hardware components is not issued. XP Syspad is, rather, a configuration tool with the ability to display some amount of information about the system.

Conclusion

I am sure that many readers can add a couple of other utilities to the list of presented utilities (and some enthusiasts can add a couple of dozen in general). There are a lot of offers of this kind on the Internet. I chose these five programs, simply because they caught my attention at different times and were postponed for further study.

Without a doubt, my favorite was PC Wizard 2007, and the professional level of the creator of this program evokes extremely respectful responses. Yes, something needs to be done, "combed", finalized, but all this mainly concerns minor things.

System Information for Windows is also very good, although it is obvious that PC Wizard 2007 looks more interesting. On the other hand, SIW contains additional useful components (in PC Wizard 2007, additional tests are mainly interesting), such as changing the MAC address, timer for turning off the computer, etc.

The rest of the participants are either specific, or mediocre, or a little off the topic of the application, which I cannot recommend to all users without exception.

ADDITIONAL LIST OF USEFUL UTILITIES

This article, I hope, will have a long "life". In this last section, specially highlighted in capital letters, I will indicate utilities that are similar in functionality to the current participants in the scrutiny.

Send applicants or to my address Email, or talk about them in our conference.

I will also try to supplement this article with fresh samples I find. So let's start, perhaps ...

Lansweeper

Program website: http://www.lansweeper.com/
The developer: Geert Moernaut