That is what I find. I have a mid range system with a 1 Gig 560ti and with everything on max I pretty well eliminate stutters by just reducing land shading to medium. And if I also disable clouds then fps rarely dip below low twenties even when attacking bombers over London and mostly stay in high fifties or more. As I like clouds then I tend to leave them on but because there is almost no stutters then play still seems smooth to me even if fps drop into the teens.
Mind you my resolution is only 1680 x 1050.
Sometimes I think the best way to cure the problem of low fps and minor stutters is to get rid of the counter and then I can stop obsessing about them.
