Thank you, this is an excellent post. And thank you for your other troubleshooting posts.
My desktop PC was built by me for digital media production (and also runs this game near flawlessly)
My laptop on the other hand is totally erratic performance wise with this game. I am positive that if I wiped it and installed the OS the way I wanted it, and not the way TOSHIBA wanted it, this game would run a little better. But my main enemy with the laptop is heat. If you are playing on a laptop, do not expect this game to run smoothly if you have it in your lap! (and don't expect to reproduce either! lol)
Also if you have some of the self desktop PC, you probably have a pretty crappy Power Supply and insufficient cooling, which will bring any system to it's knees regardless of of processing power or the amount of RAM you have . If you have reason, roll your own PC, but don't do it for this game. (That said, this game is much more of a resource hog than it should ideally be!)
I mostly play on the laptop, out of convenience, even though I know I can shoot a few strokes better on my desktop... and enjoy (most) every second of it despite of it's performance.