So I did try the beta, and the graphics are working just fine.
As I've seen on here, many people are having stuttering issues. Now that I have downloaded the newest version and flown a few times, I think I have noticed a pattern in the stuttering on my machine. It seems directly tied to any sound card related I/O. When I get close to a plane, the plane begins to stutter as soon as I can hear that plane. When I push to talk on the mic, I get a stutter. When I fire my guns, I often get a stutter. All of these seem sound related... not graphics to me. Flying around with everything fully turned on, I get 60 FPS, no questions asked.
Now... I'm going to update my graphics drivers, and see if maybe that will fix the problem... but I just wanted to throw out my observation on the subject, as I did not see this in the beta or previously.
EDIT: Updating the graphics drivers cured my problem about 98%, but it seems I still had some sound related problems... when I turned down acceleration by 1 notch, bam... works great now.