Macintosh graphical user interface, allowed for the rapid rendering of bitmapped graphics, fonts, and shapes, and the introduction of such hardware-based enhancements signaled an era of specialized graphics processing in consumer machines.

The evolution of graphics processing took a major leap forward in the mid-1990s with 3dfx Interactive's introduction of the Voodoo series, one of the earliest consumer-facing GPUs that supported 3D acceleration. The Voodoo's