Spawn wave mentioned that MS also said that their dies were getting more expensive because of bad yields. Could it be an amd thing?
Lower yields and bad yields are generally 2 different things.
Yields shouldn't be confused with defects. Defects are silicon defects, and at most make up 5% of the wafer (IIRC or if this number is consistent through every node). The redundant CUs should remove the 5% defect issue. That's why they are there. So if you remove the 5% defect problem, by removing 2 CUs, you've already given up quite a lot.
Remaining yield issues are categorized under parametric yield. This is where the chip is 100% fully functional and performs everything but not at the performance level you want it to. So this is generally where chip makers use binning techniques to release higher and lower spec parts. So the 5700, 5700XT, and 5700XT anniversary for instance are all the same chip. Parametric yield basically stops the chips from moving up the ladder in terms of performance. Effectively those chips become increasingly more unstable as they move up the clocks or just run too hot for the stock cooler provided.
The greatest factors for quickly improving parametric yield is to just run lower clocks otherwise you can improve parametric yield on a respin or something similar.
Typically speaking running lower clocks means lower wattage, lower TDP, lower cooling requirements, and of course, much better yield.
To meet consumer pricing, and thus reduce loss, they should be trying to get yield as close to 100% as they can. A lower yield just means that the expectation could be between 80-90% yield. As long as that is the expectation, then ti's just a lower yield and as long as you are getting that yield as expected nothing needs to change. You proceed as normal.
A bad yield is when it's no where close to expectation.
Hope that helps.
