Just tried the NFS11 profile and I find it does reduce the stutter a lot. Almost playable now. Still a hitch eVery 8-10 seconds now compared to before. I'm cautiously optimistic with this progress.
Also check my vram, stays right around 2100 out of 4gb so that isn't the issue.
Spoke too soon, stutter is back, I think I'm onto something....
..... Nope rats. My sound card crashed when I got the smoother gameplay, so I disabled it and didn't get the same results. Now when I run the NFS11 profile it stutter just as much as the default. I got one session where it was smooth, maybe related to sound, but I don't want to physically remove my soundcard and is drivers to see.
Back to square one.