I think we are pretty much in agreement, my original post was to the other person regarding die sizes, then using your quote to reiterate that a majority of people stopped "caring" for lack of a better word, about die sizes.
I explicitly remember people/Fboys saying die size does NOT matter as long as performance is there. Similar to your comment of being abused ect.
The above brings back memories.
My first actual "computer" was the TRS80.

cassette tape drive and all. Wish I could remember the Text game I played on that. I want to say Motizuma's revenge or something of the sort. (never beat it)
My first dedicated GPU would have been a Matrox Millenia (millenium??) I can't remember exact name. Came in a Dell prebuilt I bought for like $3500 in 97 or 98. It had a Pentium 266Mhz with MMX Technology!! lol
But hey, it played Diablo 1.
First self built had a Pentium 3, maybe 866mhz?? Right around the time Rambus was making a stink, and DDR was breaking onto the scene. IIRC it had a VIA chipset motherboard (ASUS) in order to use DDR memory instead of Rambus. I forget what the northbridge ran at 66Mhz or was it 100Mhz.
Then I built a P4 Northwood, with 133 or was it 266Mhz FSB. I wasn't able to get the fabled P4 @2.4 Ghz that overclocked like crazy. Think I got the 2.8, was still able to get it to like 3.4 or 3.5 on the overclock.
Ahh the good old days.