It actually worked. I tested in the same scene using active pause, with textures on high and low. The stutter whilst looking left and right was completely gone using low textures. See the thread I linked for details of the problem I was having. Ground textures do not seem to change in resolution which is good, they still look brilliant. I was getting around 40 fps average with these settings.
Everything on low except scenes were on high, visibility medium and tree distance of 6000 with a resolution of 1280x800 ( windowed ) + 2xAA & 8xAF.
Thanks Malefic, rep inbound.