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I see this frequently, but what is “better silicon”? Physically something is off about the manufacturing which impacts performance, but does not kill the chip. What are those defects?

There are 0.1% bad transistors instead of 0.2%? Heat output is more uniform? The bad transistors are clustered in such a way that signal routing is more efficient and leads to a measurable throughout difference?

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Very slight changes in the transistor junctions will make them slightly more resistive, more inductive, physical variance will make them narrower, wider, etc. All of these factors, although extremely slight, will add up to different response curves of switching time vs current vs voltage.

Doping is essentially a stochastic process.

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