I'm a little puzzled by how differently the game is performing on everyone's systems. Some people have similar setups and are getting very different performance.
I've settled on these:
i5-2500k @ 4.0 ghz
GTX 970 SSC
8GB RAM
1080p Res
FXAA - On
MSAA - Off
TXAA - Off
Vsync - On (set in game)
All three sliders maxed
Texture Quality - Very High
Shader Quality - Very High
Shadow Quality - Very High
Reflection Quality - Very High
Reflection MSAA - Off
Water Quality - Very High
Particles Quality - Very High
Grass Quality - High
Soft Shadows - NVIDIA
Post FX - High
AF - x16 (in game)
Ambient Occlusion - High
Tessellation - High
Advanced settings:
Extended distance and shadows - off
Long shadows off
Flying streaming - off
High res shadows - off
I bit the bullet and fully disabled the extended distance and shadow sliders, and I've been getting really nice 60fps gameplay for the most part. Countryside dips to low 50s are common, but not too distracting.
The GeForce Experience recommended settings are wacky, it has both extended sliders maxed out with the only trade off being PostFX at Very High and Nvidia PCSS shadows. Personally I don't think that's worth the trade off, and the game has some series dips with the GeForce Experience settings. PostFX on Ultra looks incredible, and the PCSS act really weird sometimes.
I'll say it again if you are having perf issues look to the advanced menu first. Those settings are killers. The extended distance stuff looks great when standing on a high point looking into the distance, but I don't find it to be that useful during regular gameplay, and it just murders my framerates. In the countryside the extended sliders wreak havoc.
I don't understand some of the trade offs some people are making but to each their own I guess. I don't think some extra view distance is worth settings shadows to normal or lowering PostFX to high. Reduce the advanced settings first.
Game definitely has a memory leak though, or just really awful memory management. I've had RAM usage rise from 3.5GB all the way to 7GB in a single play session.
Interesting. I have an almost identical setup with just a slight edge in my CPU overclock and my card's factory OC:
i5 2500k @ 4.2
EVGA 970 FTW
8gigs RAM
Win8.1
But I run on lower settings to get my consistent 60fps and I still see random dips here and there. Like moving the view over the side of a truck can dip down for some odd reason.
For the advanced menu, I spent some time turning the settings on and off in different shadow scenarios and I didn't really see an appreciable difference for any potential fps hit. Maybe when I see Andy's breakdown and see some good shots of what the long shadows and high res shadows actually do I may turn them back on. I haven't even gotten to a flying part yet so can't get that.
Truth be told though, even the lowered settings didn't seem to make that much of a difference. The before and after of changing things from Very high to high didn't really change the random dips. Those just seem to be the way of it for now. There may be a silver bullet I'm missing though. I've just been playing more than tweaking lately.