Yes as GPU RTX acceleration is the “norm” these days, Brute force is now a viable option even for animations
as the higher number of rays projected to every point in the scene will typically overcome the inherent weakness of a biased engines projecting only just enough rays and “quitting” based on a fixed number of samples chosen by the user.
Arnold is Unbiased (slower but Hollywood film level production quality)
But Vray is a hybrid render engine
where one can set a fixed number of samples in biased “light cache” mode
or simply go full unbiased Brute force.
But as you said, with the many other variables to consider it, is nearly pointless to make an objective setting recommendation for everyone.