I guess you need to clarify what “visible difference in falloff” means.
With a dielectric material, the IOR blends between diffuse and glossy reflection. Here the falloff can be seen as the change from colored and rough reflection to white and sharper reflection.
With a metal material (without a coat), there is a single layer layer with a singe roughness. Here the falloff is mostly a change from darker to brighter reflections. I think this falloff can be clearly seen, as you start from e.g. base color 0 and specular tint 0, and then gradually change base color to 1, and then specular tint to 1.
Presumably you are expecting a different kind of falloff, but from the examples given I could not tell what this means exactly.
There are many potential differences:
- Microfacet distribution
- Fresnel model
- Fresnel for microfacet vs. macro normal
- Single vs. multiple scattering
- Coating layer or not
Older renderers tend to use macro normal Fresnel and single scattering for example, which is less physically accurate but may still be a better fit for a given material or a desired look.
If I was trying to make a comparison, I would start from a sphere in a flat white environment. And then check what the differences are there, if any. And then gradually add a more complexity to the scene.