I bought an older graphics card advertised as an AMD Radeon R7 240 for an aging PC. After installing it, GPU-Z identifies it as an Radeon R5 M240 instead. The card looks like a Sapphire R7 240 and has a sticker claiming it is an R7 240 with 2GB of DDR3 memory, but the R7 240 driver fails with an error saying the AMD hardware is unsupported. Is this a mislabeled or counterfeit card, or could something else explain the detection?
2 Answers
The hardware identification comes from the GPU’s firmware and device ID, not just the sticker on the cooler or PCB. If GPU-Z consistently reports an R5 M240, the most likely explanations are that the seller shipped the wrong card or that it is a rebranded mobile M240 mounted on a desktop-style board. You generally cannot make it genuinely become an R7 240 by changing drivers.
Some inexpensive cards are sold with desktop-looking coolers and labels while actually using a Radeon R5 M240 mobile chip. That would explain both the GPU-Z result and the Radeon Software Error 182: the R7 240 driver does not recognize the installed chip. Check the GPU-Z name, device ID, and BIOS details, then compare them with the seller’s listing. If they identify an M240, treat the card as mislabeled or counterfeit and request a refund rather than trying to force the R7 240 driver.
That seems likely. I tried installing the R7 240 driver, but the installer said no supported AMD graphics hardware was detected.
The board looks almost identical to a Sapphire R7 240, and the rear sticker also says “R7 240 2GB DDR3,” so I’m wondering whether the label was simply added to a different GPU.