Periodic Massive FPS Drops (Pre- and Post-Patch)

I really want to like this game, mostly because I'm past the refund point. If I weren't, I would've already refunded it and moved on.

Right now though it's completely unplayable. I've got a GTX 660, an FX 8350, and 8gb of RAM. Normally the framerate reflects that, never going below 50 and usually above 60. Every two minutes or so before the patch, and after the patch every thirty seconds, my framerate will drop to 10 or 15 for about ten seconds.

This basically makes the game impossible to play.

I've done all the optimization tricks and I disabled turbo core on my CPU (the normal cause of this kind of thing) and it's still happening regularly. I'm out of things to try. Has anybody had a similar problem and can suggest something?

EDIT: Forgot to mention, watching my status while I play makes me think it might be a cooling issue, but I play plenty of much heavier-duty games with no heat problems. I'm planning on getting an aftermarket CPU cooler anyway so we'l lsee what happens.