I've installed the 181.20 WHQL driver and it seems to be a keeper. I also messed with a couple of settings I was using for FSX and have greatly reduced the stutters. First, I jacked up the "Global Texture Resolution" slider to full (this allows 1024x1024 resolution textures) and the stutters were reduced and the world was a lot crisper. The next thing I did was to scale back the Anisotropic Filtering via nHancer from 16x down to 8x. I really didn't notice any difference in the image, but the frame rates became very stable.
Next, I messed with the target frame rate. "Unlimited" resulting in wildly oscillating frame rates and terrible stuttering. 30 was ok, but still a bit of stuttering and instability in frame rate. 24 seems to be the sweet spot. The stuttering is so minimal that it's really, really difficult to detect and the frame rates are stable. FSX stock Mooney locks in at 23 to 24 fps, the FS2004 Beechcraft B300 from AFG tends to run from 18 to 20 fps, but very, very smooth! Granted, 24 fps is nowhere near the 50+ I get with FS2004, but now FSX is smooth.