What does the average instructioncount say?
Some shaders may be hundreds of instructions, others might be only a handful. An average is completely meaningless.
And you think it's wise to assume that what held true for ATi's X800 years ago, with DX9, is still going to be valid for today's DX11 hardware with a completely different architecture, completely different API, running completely different types of rendering algorithms?
I don't, so as I say: There's no way you can make a general claim like that. It depends on far too many factors.
I know that it doesn't apply currently, but I wanted to prove you wrong because you stated that it didn't exists and that was impossible blah blah blah and generalist
From where I'm standing it just looks like you're trying to trap me... Seems like you don't believe I develop 3D engines, and you want to prove that I don't know what I'm talking about, or something.