I don't have a planetside account (still) to get any past versions, also reformatted PC for better support with TG and didn't save downloaded files. But I consistently work on surface shaders and while the PT has been noisy, have never noticed blue speckles from the sky ever.
You can still plainly see the speckles at AA6 and AA7, though, Matt. In fact, you get more of them. Lol And AA7 is fairly noise-less for me, but still can see plain blue speckling independent of noise.
I'm not sure why you can't see an obvious issue that would have been complained about previously if their shaders are being messed up with blue speckles form the sky, or stars. Noise was always common, in shadow, and light, but not reflection speckles of solid colour from a source (sky, stars, etc). Shadows are bluish cause of ambient lighting and the sky, but the solid bright reflection like pixels are errant.
JPEG kinda kills the blue but all the "white" speckling is the blue.