Nvidia GeForce GPUs have been around since 1999, but it was with GeForce 3 that changed the rules of the game forever. Today is the 25th anniversary of the third generation GPU tech, and you can draw the past quarter of a century of generational leaps in gaming back to this one pivotal moment.
And that change? Programmability. Instead of just feeding data to the chip, people were able to run small programs directly on the GPU — giving birth to the rampant progression towards the incredible fidelity we see on PC games. But in an ironic twist for gamers in 2026, it’s that very programmability that makes it impossible to find the best GPUs at MSRP.
