NVIDIA introduced the GeForce graphics-card brand in 1999.
The first GeForce product was the GeForce 256, released in August 1999. NVIDIA marketed it as the world's first graphics processing unit, although the term GPU later became broadly used for many kinds of processors. The GeForce 256 helped establish NVIDIA as a major consumer graphics company.
GeForce cards were designed primarily for personal computers and video games. They differed from NVIDIA's professional Quadro line, which targeted computer-aided design, scientific visualization, and other workstation applications. NVIDIA's Tegra brand instead covered system-on-chip products, while Radeon became AMD's competing graphics brand after ATI was acquired.
GeForce remains one of NVIDIA's best-known product families. The company's later growth also came from data-center accelerators used in artificial intelligence, but its consumer graphics heritage began with this 1999 brand launch.