Yes, some of those early cards were monsters usually due to some combination of discrete 7400-series logic (i.e. economies of scale weren't there for most ASICs

Yes, some of those early cards were monsters usually due to some combination of discrete 7400-series logic (i.e. economies of scale weren't there for most ASICs yet) and memory chips (individual DIP chips as SIMM/DIMM modules weren't a thing yet) in the 8086 and into the 80268 era. I remember issues with some of the early clones not having full length/height slots causing an issue with some of those cards. By the 386 era, those monster cards had mostly died out on the desktop side at least (there were a few specialty cards that persisted into the late 80's/early 90's probably before enough customers complained about not fitting in their new system.)