Not really irrelevant. You can clip a 100 watt tone all you want, if you sub can handle 1000 watts RMS, it's not going to blow or even get warm. A VERY heavily clipped signal is good for something like 50% more power under the curve if you had a clean signal to compare it to, IDK, I did the math years ago and now I've forgotten. That was comparing a pure square wave, which you can't really create with any amp anyway. I think 30% more power was a more realistic number given how much most amps can even be clipped. Regardless a 2000 watt amp running clean is still more dangerous than a 1000 watt amp clipped, assuming you going to be a retard with both of them and crank them anyways. 2000 clean watts is just more overall power. The issue is many people get a 800 watt am for a 1000 watt speaker and THEN don't worry about clipping, so when that amps putting out the equivalent of 1200 clean watts, things can get hot in a hurry.
Regardless dude who bumped this is wrong, which is sad, 7 month old thread necromancy just to spout nonsense.