This actually applies to most of the game but Novigrad is the most offensive. When jogging around town the frame rate drops from 60 to 50-55 for a split second and jumps back to 60. I don't know the exact word for this, hitching? jitter? stuttering? It feels like the game is chugging along and despite running the game at a rock solid 60 when not in motion, it's looks absolutely terrible when moving around.

When I turn vsync off the game hovers between 70 and 80 fps and then drops to 50-60, simultaneously my gpu usage goes from 99% to 60-80,so it's clearly not because the settings are too high or my gpu isn't fast enough, my gpu is constantly not being told to render frames for microseconds at a time. I don't know why.

When I beat this game a year ago I don't remember this ever being a problem.

attached is the usage graph, top is gpu, bottom is cpu

Lagging.This game uses a lot of resources and has changed a lot in a year with add ons and updates and is still getting bugs.

Novigrad is probably the most demanding location in the game in terms of performance. I guess the issue you describe could be related to assets being loaded. How much ram does your PC have? How much vram? Either way, Novigrad is the location with the most stutter issues. Based on my testing it can get worse the more you roam around the city.

I have 16gb running at 2400mhz, the game uses maybe 5 or 6gb

For vram I have 4gb (or 3.5, its a 970 gtx) the game never goes above 2gb

I think it's a frame pacing issue because if I turn vsync off but cap the framerate to 60, it's 95% smoother. but as soon as I turn vysnc on, it starts dropping frames to below 60 every 2-3 seconds.

things like triple buffering and max pre-rendered frames appear to do nothing.