Not recognizing graphics card

So when I go to device manager it says under my display adapter is Parallels and not my AMD Radion HD 6970M in my iMac. There is a driver update for my graphics but it doesn't recognize my graphics card. Thoughts?

 

Parallels uses a virtual display adaptor to talk to your iMac's GPU. You will never see the real GPU in Parallels.

Steve

 

If you have Windows on a BootCamp partition you can boot into Windows from BootCamp directly and Windows should find the update for you and install it. If not you can download the update and install it that way. It should not affect Parallels because it has its own graphics driver that is uses when you boot using Parallels from the Mac side.

If updating this driver does cause strangeness on the Parallels side remove Parallels Tools in Windows (obviously running in Parallels), restart Windows and let it (or force it) to install Parallels Tools. This has helped me 100% of the time that a Windows update or a Windows program install has messed things up.

One more caution. On occasion you will see updates on the PC side to update the firmware of graphics cards, etc. I have only seen these when booting from BootCamp directly (not in Parallels). I have always avoided these for fear that it would mess something up on the Mac side. Usually if there is a firmware issue Apple ultimately publishes their own update, which is perfectly safe to use.

 

I don't recommend you to install any graphic drivers manually to your Windows virtual Machine - you need it to be installed only on the Mac side in order to communicate with the real hardware, all other work will be done by Parallels video adapter. Please note that Windows is virtualised and need specific drivers to work correctly. These drivers usually have 'Parallels'' in their names