A final update for you all as I think I have things running about as well as will be expected.
I tried everything suggested by Jessen P and by other Microsoft people on related threads and for the most part those suggestions have been grand wastes of my time. Microsoft loves to blame end user settings and third party hardware and software for their problems and to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt I know that it must be a heck of a tough job to build in support for every piece of existing hardware and software out there. But, having said that I do hold Microsoft responsible for deceptive marketing and poor business practices by not being up-front about how much is NOT supported.
For the record the V-Sync fix posted by another user which has worked for some has not worked for me.
Many of my problems have improved with various weekly patches that have been applied to my computer over the past month or so which leads me to believe that it was a significant bug somewhere in the Win 8.1 or related drivers themselves. Again I would not blame Microsoft entirely because the drivers are created by the hardware manufacturers themselves except for the fact that manually searching for driver updates to fix my problems I located many newer (even several months old) driver releases posted on hardware manufacturer sites that were not yet "approved" by Microsoft for Win 8.1. So now I am back to blaming MS because I Windows wouldn't even let me install several of those drivers because they are not approved drivers.
In the end I have solved most of my problems with the automated patches and with two other things.
First I solved a great any of my upgrade problems when I updated a Bluetooth Driver from the ASUS manufacturer's website that was not on Microsoft's list of most current updates. My first attempt to install this driver was blocked by windows because it was not an approved driver but only a week later MS located what appears to have been the same driver after I completely disabled and uninstalled the Bluetooth drivers on my computer. By doing this Windows recognized hardware on my system that was not functioning properly and it put the problem into the "Solve PC Issues" flag on the task bar. When I then went through the automated process to follow that flag up that is when MS located the latest Bluetooth driver for my device on ASUS's website and allowed me to install it. That driver alone fixed about 80% of my major problems or at least significantly improved them.
Secondly I have resorted to running any games both as Administrator and by forcing my computer to run with the High Performance Graphics card. By doing this it seems to avoid the wild frame rate changes that I was experiencing. This tends to suggest to me that when they created Win 8.1 Microsoft screwed up the graphics chip manufacturers drivers and that Win 8.1 was forcing conflicts between the "integrated" graphics and the stand alone graphics processors on my computer.
Good luck to you all.
Personally I an hoping that Google will build a stable, basic operating system that tech comfortable users can go back to that will allow better end user control and get rid of a bunch of this **** and bloat that is in Windows now that most of us don't need, don't want and don't use. Microsoft needs some true competition other than Apple. I don't want my Windows to work like Apple products or my touch devices. I want it lean with no **** running in the background that I haven't launched so that whatever I am running in the foreground is getting maximum performance.
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