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>but why not consider the NVidia Riva TNT a real GPU?

Shaders.

Geforce 256 and 2 were fixed-function; I don't believe the first shaders showed up until Geforce 3.

It was T&L that pushed PR to call it a GPU, but afaik both 256 and GF2 had some shader capabilities. Nvidia Shading Rasterizer (NSR)https://www.anandtech.com/show/537/4 https://www.evga.com/articles/archive/91.asp