just to report back. i did use handbrake to convert one of the files i downloaded from youtube to h264. this did make a difference and i can move the svp slider to about halfway.
but im still getting about 1 frame dropped every 3-4 seconds though. i scaled back all my madvr settings to performance but that didn't do much(dxva where available), at least for 4k h264 or hevc/h265. with svp off i can run some pretty extreme madvr settings without losing a frame, but svp definitely takes some horsepower.
when i go into the svp/application settings/gpu acceleration/ and swap between "no acceleration" and 980ti it doesn't make a difference at all. using msi afterburner to gpu statistics show that my gpu isn't even going past 535mhz. i believe my gpu isn't even being used and its all on my 2500k doing the heavy lifting.
i found a thread that says win10 nvidia drivers and later are broken. i will use display driver uninstaller to flush my drivers and give a win8 driver that was said to work nicely with svp a try... even though im on win10. i will report back my findings.
mind you these studder are at 4k only.... 1080p bluray h264 rips seem to run smoothly at high madvr+max svp settings.