Weird stuttering in Abyssos: The Eight Circle

[Incirion]

I started having stuttering in game after 6.21 as well, but for me it's not just p8. it's any duty, any overworld area, basically anywhere. It was tolerable for a while, but the past two days it has been really really bad. I noticed that whenever a stutter happens, my GPU usage percent drops, specifically the ffxiv process. It's a dramatic drop, about 20%. Even if I am simply standing in game, I can watch the GPU spike.

However, ffxiv is the *only* game that is acting this way. I can play multiple other games and have no issue.

I have tried everything I can think of:
-Lowered graphics settings
-tried fps limiter in game
-tried fps limiter out of game on NVidia card
-tried validating ffxiv file integrity through Steam
-Completely uninstalled Geforce Experience and graphics driver before reinstalling them.
-Uninstalled Geforce Experience and Graphics driver and went back to a driver I know was working fine, the June release.
-Checked for any available updates
-cleaned out temp folders
-ran disk defragment/disk cleanup
-scanned for viruses


I am at a complete loss as to why this is happening and why it only affects ffxiv...

Edit: Tried new Nvidia driver released 10/12/22. Issue still persists
Edit 2: Uninstalled ffxiv and reinstalled on a new SSD. still have stutter