The school profile can make a difference. At some schools it is very difficult to attain an unweighted 4.0, even among NMF’s with a string of 5’s on AP tests.
When frazzled kids were applying to colleges, several peers got into multiple “top 10” schools without having straight A’s in all AP classes, and none of the students with straight A’s who did not go the ED route got admitted everywhere they applied. Actually, no more than a couple of students each year fit the “straight A in most rigorous schedule” profile, but many, many more got into schools that boast of turning down valedictorians.
That said, students seemed to find that on the whole, admissions results at the most competitive schools improved when the school ditched class rank, although tbh there were some complaints from parents of students who got high grades in honors/AP classes without correspondingly high scores on standardized tests.
The cynic in me suspects that colleges are more likely to practice holistic review of applications from students without outstanding hooks when they do not have a hard number indicating where an applicant falls in their high school class. (Or when they do not have to report a ranking to USNWR.)