Attempting to fix lighting stutter - ideas?

[Ridebird]

I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how this game functions and where the stutter occurs, and have finally reached a conclusion.

After playing for five hours or so in total now, it's clear to me that light effects from artificial lightsources (mainly) and in some cases, the sun, cause ALL of the stuttering I am still struggling with.

Since it might be of interest, apart from these stutters that occur very frequently I have managed to get the game smooth and running well at a locked 60 FPS (well, 59.86 according to ReShade statisics), with frametimes going back and forth between 16.6ms and 16.7ms, with the following configuration. Bear in mind, this is with a controller! I do not think the game is playable with a mouse as it jitters like mad. With a controller, it's fine. I think this is due to the frametime not being 100% locked like in any normal, functioning, video game.

GTX 1070, latest drivers
i7 4790k
16 GB RAM
Win 10 x64
Game on an SSD
Gsync screen

In nVidia control panel:
Gsync
Screen @ 60hz (higher just causes further issues)
Pre rendered frames to 1
Fast vsync (to cap FPS/improve frametimes, not sure if it even does anything in DH2 actually)

Capping frames at 60 FPS via Rivatuner Statistics Server but I am unsure if this does anything either.

In-game:
Fullscreen, borderless doesn't help with this issue
All high except fog, low, shadows, medium
TXAA
DOF, Bloom, Motion blur off
Triple buffering ON - helps, slightly, with this issue
HBAO on - I can't notice any difference stuttering wise and it looks much better
60 FPS cap - if you do not use this the game will run like ♥♥♥♥ regardless of what you're running - in my experience.


So, with this the game is locked to 60 ish with no noticeable slowdowns ever occuring (I haven't gotten to Jindosh Mansion yet). The stuttering however, is visible especially around the Overseers area in Karnaca Harbor, which you can reach quickly. I am now at Addermire, and while it is much better here, big lightsources that are on the upper levels cause massive stuttering while going past them the first time, then the second time it's fine. Go away a bit, come back, and it will stutter again.

Something that is very interesting with this is that there is NO difference in frame times or frame rate according to ReShade statistics here. NOTHING changes when the stuttering occurs. Which is just so damn weird.

This leads me to believe there is some sort of shader cache here, so I attempted to disable shader caching in nVidia control panel, but it does nothing. I have tried disabling and enabling every setting and trying without vsync/with, etc, times a million, to no avail.

So my question is this - any ideas on how to resolve this issue? Anyone that have managed to fully fix this? Would be a big help.