Then it was assumed that GPU mining would be dead since ASICs came out and then Litecoin came out with Scrypt which was only possible to mine with GPUs.
Then Litecoin got ASICs and it was the entire cycle all over again with ETH.
In fact, the anti-ASIC Litecoin direct successor was not Ethereum but Vertcoin
(launched in January 2014, while Ethereum was launched ~1.5 year later)
btw, it looks like new algo aka Verthash - may have a similar characteristic to ethash (ie. "AMD friendly"):
https://old.reddit.com/r/vertcoin/comments/cl2ske/verthash_is_near_to_the_final_version/From what I remember Vertcoin was released shortly before the 2014 bear-market started and I think it was like 20% more profitable than LTC/DOGE however many people had issues with stability on Vertcoin.
It used slightly more power and was more intense on the GPU. Most people who used the 280X in those days already had trouble keeping their 350Watts GPU power hogs stable and with Vertcoin it just made the matters worse.
However it still was profitable for the month or so when it was released. But shortly after all the alts including BTC started to decline when $900 support broke.