Hardware

It's because AD102 is already a huge monolithic die, a little over 600mm2, with 814mm2 being the theoretical limit. In short: the bigger the die size the lower the yields, there will never be a gaming GPU much bigger than 600mm2 because then you're looking at terrifying prices.

A node shrink only helps so much, and you don't want a GPU sucking 800 watts either. The wider memory bus also takes up extra space. The 5090 is still monolithic so a ~30% improvement in performance sounds plausible.

Even worse, AMD (underatandibly) is "skipping" RDNA4 high-end to both maximize AI production and give their engineers more time to get a chiplet design with multiple graphics chiplets working well.

RDNA5 will likely be high end again, but until then, the 7900XTX or a refresh of it will likely remain the fastest AMD card.

Which means next gen Nvidia pricing will go through the roof. We're probably looking at a $999 16-20GB 5070(Ti) that matches AMD flagship performance so I wouldn't be surprised if a 24GB 5080 will be priced at $1500-1750 MSRP as the gaming flagship and the hybrid 32GB 5090 $2500-3000 MSRP. Remember the 3090Ti launched at $2000 despite gaming competition from the $1000 6950XT.

.. And people will buy them. RIP GPU prices for the next 3 years, at least.