Thanks, yeah the splash screen lag seems to be balancing out. I can't have the latest drivers unfortunately since they completely screw my system up causing screen tear constantly. Getting some really odd framerate problems too just in this first room. Regardless of whether it's on Low or Ultra there's a lot of slowdown. Figured a 4790k + 970 could at least do medium.
I really like the fluidity of movement from what I've seen but man, they're making me work for this. I guess it calls back to the older days of PC gaming in more ways than first thought since it feels like I'm gonna need to dabble a lot to get this running right. I suppose I could swap it to my SSD but I didn't expect issues on lower settings, and I'm not entirely sure if it's my HDD at fault either.