Both from a theoretical analysis and practical experience for pump gas motors low compression/high boost is the way to go. But there are so many variables and real world limitations that the discussion can get unfocused quick. Assuming you are starting with a fresh build of a given engine family, there will still be significant limitations in terms of the available heads, pistons, bore and stroke, gaskets, and so on. Then you need to consider the blower choices, intercoolers and so on. How this all pans out for the typical SBC, SBF, and BBC’s that I am familiar with is that 8-8.5:1 is where you want to be for compression. Using pump fuel, you then size the blower to produce ~15psi and that is going to be pretty close to optimal. With a decent method for lowering the air charge temp you can expect ~1.7hp/ci at the wheels with that kind of setup (with good heads and exhaust, etc.) and it will run on 93 octane. interestingly, this is about the same hp as a really optimized NA setup will produce on the same fuel - the limitation is the fuel. But while it is POSSIBLE to get the same peak hp NA it is going to be MUCH more difficult and expensive to achieve and the torque curve/engine bevaior may not be something you want to live with. Most people don’t enjoy cruising a V-8 at 4,000rpm running 4.10’s or for that matter buying a $5,000 set of cylinder heads and paying for a few days of dyno time while they figure out what is going to work or not. And so on. It’s not that the blower setup is going to be exactly plug and play either, but it is an order of magnitude simpler and will produce a car with much better real world performance.
I have a rudimentary knowledge of why lower CR/more boost is the way to go. If I get time later, I will try to explain it.