Some more things I noticed.
I'm in the F3 room, loaded the Uly, starts rendering at 8 to 11 fps. After about 30 seconds or so, the rendering goes up to 30-33 fps. Then after another 30 seconds or so, the rendering reaches 50-52fps, from which it does not get any higher.
Here's the interesting part. If i now open the render options screen and toggle normal maps off, I immediately suffer the drop down to 11 fps range for another period of time, which returns again eventually to the 52fps upper limit. After this occurs once, i can toggle normal maps on and off again with no FPS loss at all. Even more interestingly, If I toggle Glow maps, or specular pass, the same behavior occurs.
This is pretty cool considering it's all repeatable right there in the F3 room. (what's that feature called again anyway ?)
Anyway, I realized different models have different fps averages, so I decided to stick with the ulysses, but i can repeat this behavior with all of them. And if a mod wants to clean up this thread as I was posting while testing, some of the earlier assumptions aren't quite right, so it might be a good thing. This is the most relevant post.