Hi RCEE,
Thanks for the tips. Lowering antialiasing helped with the load time, but the game still runs around 8/fps, where it used to run between 40-60/fps (without v-sync), using the same settings. It seems like the CPU / GPU under-utilized. With 11.10 and previous versions, the CPU / GPU load would run pretty hot during the initial rendering. Now they stay cool, and dont seem to be utilized the same way... I have the Steam installation (with addons) and a regular installation (no addons) and they are impacted same.
Thanks!