Low Performance GTX 970

It better, 970 is their flagship. Something as glaring as this shouldn't have been in at release.

Oh well, I'm sure it'll be remedied by the time I get around to my upgrade

You have a intel CPU wich includes a Intel HD GPU.
While the game can run on those, there are somethings issues if the game runs the PA.exe and coherent UI processes on different GPU's.
See point 5 in this thread about how to force the coherent UI onto the proper GPU:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/know-issues.65155/

Problem was solved on page one, too much memory for nvidia drivers.

I have a gtx 970 with 16 gb of ram and PA is worse now than when I had the gtx 460 in there..
So I'd argue that it's not solved as I don't have 32 gig of ram but I have the same symptoms...