GoKawiilNvidia's GeForce 256, launched 1999, marked its first GPU branding
On October 11, 1999, Nvidia shipped the GeForce 256, the first product it labeled a 'GPU,' featuring a hardware transform-and-lighting engine. Offloading graphics work from the CPU wasn't new—Commodore and 3dfx had done similar things earlier—but Nvidia coined and popularized the GPU term with this release. The card particularly benefited systems with weaker CPUs like low-end Celerons.