Surging Frame Rate

So I have been having this issue for a while, but up until the latest update, I could always work around it. Now, the work around doesn't work.

Issue: When playing Space Engineers, gameplay surges almost like a heartbeat. fast, slow, fast, slow. I have been unable to deduce why so far. It is very regular, about 1 second per cycle. I used F11 to look at the log, but nothing there except an error that states it's because I don't have the Signal DLC yet. Shift+F11 shows a regular, but very slight surging across FPS, UPS, simulation speed, and Rendering. Doesn't seem to match the severity of the slowdown. All of the CPU and GPU loads fluctuate between mid 20's% to mid 30's%

Old Workaround: Before this latest update, if I went into Graphics Settings and changed the Lighting quality, didn't matter what from or to, the surging would go away until the next time I started up the game.

Now, this workaround doesn't work, and the game is unplayable.

I tried a new game, removed all mods, restarted the computer, verified files, and even completely uninstalled, and wiped steam space engineers folder and %appdata% folder, then re-installed fresh. No change. To verify it is a fresh install, when running the game now, I get tutorial popups, had to accept the EULA again, and all settings have been reverted to defaults.

What else can I check/do?