I think our basic point of departure is different. Your point of departure is to take a system and adjust the settings to have the components balanced. This could lead to poor performance. My point of departure is that I have a set of requirements in terms of graphics quality and FPS and then ensure I build my system with hardware that meet or exceed those requirements. If I achieve my requirement in terms of both quality AND FPS with both components generally working equally hard, I feel I have the “best” balance of system for my requirements. In reality that is where I am currently with an RTX 3080 and Ryzen 7 3700X running 4K at essentially all ultra with 300 TLOD and 200 OLOD. With this and doing the flying I normally do, I typically get around 40 FPS smoothly while going 50+ FPS in a “hardware friendly” situation and around 30 FPS in a “harsh” environment.
And when I say they are in balance, it is obviously on average: sometimes the one is the constraint, sometimes the other. But generally they are close to being in harmony.
For me, that is perfect.