Why chiplets and dual-gpu cards doesn't make sense anymore
The dual-gpu approach (such as raden HD 5970) made sense when GPUs were low in power-draw and reviewers rarely did any proper tests for frame consistency. Hardly any new games support more than one GPU anymore and the chiplet approach would just add latency. The only way forward is to make GPUs more and more power-hungry, eventually over 1000W will be needed to properly utilize the top GPU.
But nvidia has managed to make very powerful monolithic dies. A single 4090 will draw up to 450W by default and with unlocked power-budget it can draw as high as 600W. The 3090 die was so large that the card would throttle under furmark since even the miniimum voltage was too high, the reason why this isn't a problem in normal usage is that most loads will only load a part of the GPU maybe 40% allowing the GPU to boost higher.
The 4090 isn't even the full die. The full die does have 12.5% more SMs but the actual performance uplift in games would of course be a lot smaller unless there is a significant increase of the power-budget. Power-consumption is the limiting factor, not yield.
Many games will not even load all gpu cores, this is especially true at lower resolutions, this becomes more and more of an issue as you make the die larger.
The dual-gpu approach (such as raden HD 5970) made sense when GPUs were low in power-draw and reviewers rarely did any proper tests for frame consistency. Hardly any new games support more than one GPU anymore and the chiplet approach would just add latency. The only way forward is to make GPUs more and more power-hungry, eventually over 1000W will be needed to properly utilize the top GPU.
But nvidia has managed to make very powerful monolithic dies. A single 4090 will draw up to 450W by default and with unlocked power-budget it can draw as high as 600W. The 3090 die was so large that the card would throttle under furmark since even the miniimum voltage was too high, the reason why this isn't a problem in normal usage is that most loads will only load a part of the GPU maybe 40% allowing the GPU to boost higher.
The 4090 isn't even the full die. The full die does have 12.5% more SMs but the actual performance uplift in games would of course be a lot smaller unless there is a significant increase of the power-budget. Power-consumption is the limiting factor, not yield.
Many games will not even load all gpu cores, this is especially true at lower resolutions, this becomes more and more of an issue as you make the die larger.
