It seems it's main effect is to create addition copies when values are inr register that do not support this trick, which increase register pressure and makes the code bigger.
The main noteworthy regression I was able to observe was pattern of the type (setcc (trunc (and X, C)), 0) where C is such as it would benefit from the hi register trick. To prevent this, a new pattern is added to materialize such pattern using a 32 bits test. This has the added benefit of working with any constant that is materializable as a 32bits immediate, not just the ones that can leverage the high register trick, as demonstrated by the test case in test-shrink.ll using the constant 2049 .
I believe this was the only use of the TEST8ri_NOREX instruction. Can you remove it from the td file too?