Sudden and Random HUGE FPS drops since last few patches

[hockeywarrior]

I've been having this really nasty problem since the last two patches (the beta, and now the official release and hotfix) where my FPS will be up in normal ranges (around 20-30 FPS) and then suddenly drop into the single digits, regardless of what direction I'm looking or whether I'm flying over ground. Before these recent patches I did NOT have this problem. It seems like just when things are working another patch comes around to screw everything up for me performance-wise.

It's almost like there's a memory leak. Anyone else having this issue? It makes the game completely unplayable for me. I could reinstall but I don't have a very fast internet connection and redownloading the game could take a very long time.

I'm running the game at full resolution (1920x1080) with texture settings set to Original, buildings on low, ground shading and detail at medium, trees at medium, with shadows and roads enabled, but no grass. SSAO, EP filter, vertical sync, and AA are of course turned off.

My relevant specs:

Windows 7 Ultimate
Intel i7 930 2.8 ghz (stock clock) quad-core
Geforce GTX 260 896 MB (overclocked to 675 ghz)
Rosewill 600W PSU
1 TB HD
6 GB ADATA DDR3 RAM