My pre-Fractal rig (long ago sold) was a large pedal board with a gig rig G2 switching system.
All the drives came from the board (Klon KTR, KoT, Wampler Pinnacle and a Hook Royale in the last incarnation), this sounded great - at home I plugged into a Carr amp, when I played out I plugged straight into whatever was there - since the amp was just making it louder.
Honestly it sounded amazing, and plugged into a Marshall stack set really loud but basically clean (ok a bit of compression but not much more than that) - you'd never know it wasn't all amp.
In the Fractal I use the amp model for main tone but love boosting with drive pedals.
My point being, good quality pedals, nice power supply and signal path - into an amp, that's a great sound and you'd never know it wasn't all amp.
It's not better or worse it's just different, and often not that much!