25 years ago today, NVIDIA GeForce 3 came out (the graphics card was released on February 27, 2001). It was the industry's first GPU to support programmable shaders, and it also opened an unforgettable golden age of PC gaming.
Nvidia looked back at the golden age of PC gaming around the release of GeForce 3. In a brief memo posted on social media, Nvidia mentioned classic games from the early 2000s, including Max Payne and Warcraft 3, which marked the beginning of the Windows PC platform's transition to more advanced 3D engines and special effects.
The GeForce 3 series product line was smaller, and Nvidia updated the product line later in 2001 to expand to three major retail versions.
GeForce3 series graphics cards (retail models):
GeForce 3, original
GeForce 3 Ti 200, MSRP $149
GeForce Ti 500, MSRP $349
The release time of these games coincides very well with the launch time of Geforce 3. "Max Payne" was launched on the PC platform in late July 2001, while "Warcraft 3" was released in early July 2002.
Geforce 3 was also part of Nvidia's broader strategy that year. In 2001, NVIDIA reached a cooperation with Xbox and Apple. NVIDIA shipped Xbox GPU and MCP for the Xbox at that time.
NVIDIA official blog:
