I tend to have the 3D plot of the brightest star coming up as info in the Maxim camera window, and as Dave says, doesn't take long for an 8300 chip to start turn stars into "mesas"!
Guess I'm usually more focused (no pun intended) on getting round stars than perfect profiles, but it shouldn't actually take that much more work as you say, particularly if you're running an automated profile for data collection. Was reminded last new moon how important it is to the run set to go to maximise every minute of dark sky when you're a city astronomer.
Another PI option is masked stretch. Can be very gentle on data, but prone to a little ringing around very bright stars on nebs sometimes.
Of course you can go crazy with starmasks and morphological transforms to "smooth" the sharp edges on your star profiles too if you're going to be artificial about it.