The NVIDIA GeForce 256 was a groundbreaking graphics card released by NVIDIA in 1999. It was the first card in the GeForce series and was famous for being the first GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to support hardware transformation and lighting (T&L), a major leap forward in 3D graphics technology at the time. The GeForce 256 was designed for gaming and 3D rendering, offering significant improvements in performance over previous graphics solutions.

The Windows driver for the NVIDIA GeForce 256 allows the operating system to communicate effectively with the GPU, enabling it to handle graphical tasks like rendering 3D games, running graphical applications, and managing display outputs.