Ada was rumored to be 600mm2 for several months now and it was correct.
RDNA3 is rumored to be 500mm2, that's not what I'd call small.
We used to say that under 250mm2 was small, now its 500mm2?
Sadly this was always going to happen. After Fermi Nvidia went down in die sizes and grew massively in clock speed. I don't even think they knew how well Kepler would clock, but I do remember an overclocker called Ghost talking about a 80% bios about two days before launch. IE, the bios was sent to him that raised the clock speeds by 80%. That said it was years ago, and although my long term memory is good it could have been 60%. Either way it was unexpected, and whilst no one thought that the 680 could compare to the 7970 it was right up there with it.
That stayed until Turing. Die size small, cheaper to make, clock balls. Then Turing happened and Nvidia started bolting on the kitchen sink. Apparently though AMD are going in the other direction this time around. Which is a relief tbh. If both they and Nvidia just focussed on tanks and selling us server gear then we'd be screwed.
As for 500mm2? you are talking about the 7900XT I would assume. Again, I don't think that card will be under £1200. That said it is not the card I could give a damn about. Maxwell was a hit because of the 970* and 980. They were affordable, sipped power and absolutely flew. And that was superb for gamers, just like AMD Polaris.
I know this forum can be a bit blind sided and not care at all about cards less than the most expensive one, but in real world terms they are the ones that matter. The ones that make PC gaming worth doing, and affordable. They are also the bread and butter of GPUs, far outselling everything else.
Cards like the 3060 and 3060Ti are oxy moron cards. IE, what's the bloody point of putting RT stuff on them when they are not capable of running it? therefore adding absolutely nothing else to where it matters - gaming.
We need a step back to Pascal/Maxwell. No one needs this crap, no one wants to pay the leccy bill to have it and no one wants to pay £2000 for a bloody GPU. Even those who will buy the 4090 don't want to pay two grand for it. But that is what it costs. It's absolutely insane.
If AMD can make, say, a 7600 and 7700 that perform like a 3070 for less than £450? or £450? they will succeed big time IMO. Apparently they have shrunk the Infinity cache section, lowered it (because they've sped it up and made it more tidy) and so on. If they cut them diamond shaped (if they are small enough) then they can get a lot out of a wafer. If they don't have all of the RT crap that means less heat, less power, smaller coolers, cheaper across the board.
