Fourth generation
The first fully programmable GPUs arrived at the launch of the NVIDIA GeForce FX and ATI Radeon 9700. These cards allowed per-pixel operations with programmable vertex and pixel shaders. They allowed limited user-specified mapping of input-output data operations and served as separate, dedicated hardware that was allocated for pixel shader and vertex shader processing.
The ATI Radeon 9700 released in 2002 had 110 million transistors, 128 MB of 256-bit DDR DRAM, and a 275 MHz core clock speed.
There was another 9500 Pro that budget buyers were extremely fond of due to its 8-pixel pipelines and resulting fast performance. Some PC enthusiasts were able to modify it into a 9700 non-Pro!
The first GeForce FX (FX 5200) was released ...
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