It was released on October 11, 1999!

NVIDIA’s GeForce 256 had 32MB of VRAM on a 128-bit memory bus with up to 4.6GB/sec of memory bandwidth, while the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 has 24GB of VRAM on a 384-bit memory bus with up to 1008GB/sec (1TB/sec+).

The GeForce 256 had a 50W TDP, while the GeForce RTX 4090 has a 450W+ TDP.

This means that the GPU transistor count between the GeForce 256 and GeForce RTX 4090 is a difference of 3300x while the VRAM capacity has blown up by 768,000x.

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/100271/nvidia-geforce-256-aka-worlds-first-gpu-is-now-25-years-old-released-on-october-11-1999/index.html