WebGPU's features and limits fit the hardware GPU WebGL names
Under a Windows claim with a hardware Direct3D renderer, the adapter has BC compression, no ASTC/ETC2, a 16384 texture limit and is not a fallback adapter. N/A elsewhere, and when no adapter is returned (a blocklisted GPU is ordinary) (severity: warn).
What a detector infers
On Windows, Chrome's WebGPU runs on Direct3D 12, and Direct3D bounds what an adapter can expose: DXGI has no ASTC or ETC2 formats at all, BC texture compression is mandatory, and so is a 16384 maximum 2D texture. Chrome's software Vulkan rasteriser exposes ASTC and ETC2 and caps textures at 8192.
So a WebGL renderer string naming a hardware Direct3D GPU, next to a WebGPU adapter with ASTC or ETC2, no BC, an 8192 texture limit, or isFallbackAdapter true, is a software rasteriser presented under a desktop GPU's name — the shape of a Windows persona on a server with no GPU and WebGPU forced on.
Measured on genuine Chrome 153 on an RTX 3070: texture-compression-bc present, no ASTC or ETC2, 16384. subgroup-size-control is NOT a tell: genuine Chrome 153 exposes it on Direct3D 12.
How to resolve it
Do not force WebGPU on where the only adapter is software, or do not claim a hardware GPU there. navigator.gpu with no adapter is an ordinary blocklisted state; a software adapter under a desktop GPU's name is not.
Nearby checks in Render & GPU
- WebGL renderer (software vs hardware)
webgl-not-softwareThe audit reads UNMASKED_RENDERER through the WEBGL_debug_renderer_info extension and matches it against SwiftShader, llvmpipe and Software. - WebGPU vendor coheres with WebGL vendor
webgl-webgpu-vendorTwo independent graphics stacks in the same browser are backed by the same physical adapter: this check lowercases the WebGL UNMASKED_VENDOR… - WebGPU's architecture is the one Chrome's own table gives the GPU WebGL names
webgpu-architecture-vs-rendererGPUAdapterInfo.architecture is not free text. Chrome's WebGPU implementation derives it from the GPU's PCI device id through its own table… - WebGL exposes a full parameter table + UNMASKED vendor/renderer
webgl-param-tableBeyond the two headline strings, a WebGL context answers getParameter for dozens of driver-specific limits. - WebGL parameters return the JavaScript types the specification assigns them
webgl-param-value-typesgetParameter does not return loose values: the WebGL specification fixes the JavaScript TYPE of each one. - WebGL vendor/renderer identical in a Worker
webgl-worker-vs-mainThe audit reads UNMASKED_VENDOR and UNMASKED_RENDERER on the main thread, then spawns a dedicated Worker that builds its own WebGL context… - masked WebGL VENDOR matches the engine
webgl-engine-vendorThis check reads the plain gl.getParameter(gl.VENDOR) — the masked value, not the debug extension's unmasked GPU string. - WebGL1 and WebGL2 report the same UNMASKED GPU
webgl1-webgl2-coherenceThe check creates a WebGL1 context and a WebGL2 context and reads UNMASKED_VENDOR_WEBGL / UNMASKED_RENDERER_WEBGL from each through the…
Clearcote is a browser built for fingerprint coherence
It is a Chromium fork, maintained by the same people who wrote this reference. It ships as a compiled browser rather than as a stealth script injected into someone else's — which is a description of how it is built, and is not an argument about how it behaves on this check.
This audit takes no position on how Clearcote scores on Render & GPU checks, on this one, or anywhere else. It has no baseline corpus of other people's fingerprints to rank you against and no vendor scoreboard — nearly every check is self-referential, asking one browser the same question through two independent APIs and reporting whether both answers can be true at once. It runs identically on any browser, including ours. Run it on yours and read the result yourself.
See the other checks in Render & GPU — the family webgpu-features-vs-renderer belongs to.