Did disabling texture read also mean disabling discard instruction? That way you’ve allowed for early Z and possibly even removed shader invocations. The case with the same texture coordinate is more interesting, but what do you get on screen? Is everything discarded now, everything rendered?

Here is the DF review of Stalker 2 on Xbox and PC. I go over the graphical quality of the game, how it runs, and how the Xbox versions look next to PC. Importantly, I do this all in the context of the Day 0 patch which is drastically different to the review version. Enjoy!
youtu.be/cHQ3jAeza60