This genereation seems that is getting performance using more power and more cores. Not really an architectural change but only packing more things in the chip that require more power.
Too true. I've been looking replace my 1080. This was a beast in 2016, but the only way I can get a more performant card these days is to double the power draw. That's not really progress.
Then get a modern GPU and limit the power to what your 1080 draws. It will still be significantly faster. GPU power is out of control these days, if you knock 10% off the power budget you generally only lose a few percentage of performance.
Cutting the 5090 down from 575w to 400w is a 10% perf decrease.
Even if I knew how to do that, I'd still need double the power connectors I currently have.
5090 was an example, same process applies to lower tier GPUs that don't require extra power cables. ie a 3080 with the same power budget as a 1080 would run circles around it (1080 with default max power limit of 180w gets approx 7000 in TimeSpy, 3090 limited to 150w gets approx 11500). Limiting the power budget is very simple with tools such as MSI Afterburner and others in the same space.
That's because 1080 and whole 10xx generation was pinacle and is the best GPU nvidia ever made. Nvidia won't make the same mistake any time soon.