What? So hardware features don't matter? Right.. So AMD and NVIDIA are stupid.. They should just keep doing die shrinks of the same architecture and call it a day pff... Why spend millions researching? If raw performance is the only thing that matters, as "the pipeline is the same"...
That's why we have feature levels in direct X.
If you have a DirectX 12 card, it supports the core features of DX12.
If you have a DirectX 12 Ultimate care, it supports the core features of DX12 U.
There are sub features involved for all of these as well. Feature levels like 12_1, 12_2 etc.
When we introduced compute shaders, that was the flexible glory everyone was looking for. You don't need fixed function hardware for compute shaders to operate. The more compute shader operations you can process the better.
If this technology only worked on DX12U, that wouldn't necessarily get people to move over to UE5. Because a majority of compliant devices are closer to DX12 spec.
They made their own virtual texturing and virtual geometry pipeline. It may or may not leverage additional hardware features, but as least from what I can ascertain from reading, it does not require additional hardware features to run.
I think you're debating with me on what's impressive of PS5, what the system is capable of achieving with this engine. And me debating what's impressive of the engine: that the engine can scale from Android devices, up to render farms working on the Mandalorian.