Very useful information, ThorChild, thanks for sharing!

I have in fact tried different settings with my Nvidia GTX 960 4GB, and I do recommend for this card the Medium settings with VSynch Off, FOV increased to 100. Making higher or lower settings won't give noticeable changes except it should increase FPS if you set it lower, but that's not necessary with this card IMO.

XenonS

Raises hand "Me, too." Could I ask what monitoring tools you're using? I'm running a 2GB GTX 760, so pretty comparable.

My current, post-Pathfinder, issue primarily occurs on planets with lots of voxel-grass, especially if it's dense and "waist high." That environment pretty much guarantees an eventual CTD. I can run around all day on the desert planets or ones where there's only sparse patches of grass-stuff.

I'm using GPU-Z:

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/gpu-z-download-techpowerup.html

I run the game in 'bordered' mode and set the resolution to be less than the 1920x1080 of the desktop size, then have GPU-Z on one side of the screen to see the 'sensors' readout for GPU Memory Used.

If i select 'medium' texture settings VRAM usage starts around my cards 2GB limit and stays maxed out, so i suspect the 'stutter' and lag i was seeing was when my 750Ti just did not have enough resources to run smoothly.

Currently running with:

Anti-aliasing: TAA
Motion Blur: Off (just not keen on the effect, more than a performance choice)
HBAO: On
Ansiotropic Filtering: 1
Texture detail: Low - seems to be the main performance improvement on my 2GB card.
Shadow Detail: Medium
Reflection Quality: Medium
Light shafts: On
Max Fps: 60 (not getting that obviously!)

I use NVIDIA control panel settings for some overrides, so my NMS.exe profile looks like this:

Where no info is given, that setting is using the global default setting:

Anti-aliasing - FXAA: On
Anti-aliasing - Gamma Correction: On
Anti-aliasing - Mode: Override any application setting
Anti-aliasing - Setting: 4x
Anti-aliasing - Transparency: Multisample
Multi-display/Mixed-GPU acceleration: Single display performance mode
Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off (NMS is not Direct X)
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Allow
Texture filtering - quality: Quality
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Off (NMS is not Direct X)
Threaded optimization: On
Triple buffering: On
Vertical sync: Fast
Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames: Use the 3D application setting

-------------------------------

Obviously my game does not fly, but i get a playably smooth 20-30+ fps, max at 60 when looking at the sky etc, and with the Low texture choice the majority of the fps lags and stutters i was having have gone.

Thanks for the comprehensive write-up! Maybe I can keep this ol' video card for a while longer...

I own a 750Ti and I can confirm lowering texture quality improved fps noticeably.
Using GPU-Z I discovered I can stay under 2 Gigs of VRAM with medium texture quality.
Almost every other setting is maxed out.
I don't use a dedicated profile on NVIDIA control panel, but I enabled triple buffering globally.
My resolution is 1680 x 1050.

Thanks, ThorChild.