Being EFI, they really need to have some fuel in them for best pump life, and I suspect GM's rating of tanks was a little more conservative on the early EFI to account for it.
I went the opposite direction from SquareRoot on my wife's daily. She liked to run it lower than it should, to the point of me having to rescue her with a 5 gallon can a few times. With HPTuners, I adjusted it to read a couple gallons lower without her knowing, and we haven't had issues since. The speedometer is also a few MPH fast to help on the speeding tickets...