I finally played the game last night.
I played 6 straight hours without any crashes or glitches.
I maxed all the settings and set it to max FPS, borderless window.
I left vsync OFF and used my GPU's G-sync instead.
I had some minor stuttering like everyone else, but it wasn't game-breaking and it seemed to only happen whenever I exited my spaceship.
GTX 980-8GB, i7 6700K, Windows 10, 16GB DDR4, Samsung SSD.
I play at 1080p and the framerate stayed at 60fps almost the entire time.
So, I have no technical complaints on my end, which is shocking to me. Reading this thread yesterday, seeing people with similar systems to mine having so many problems I figured I would be asking for a Steam refund after 1 hour. But I was 6 hours in before I just fell asleep at like 2AM in the morning.
I spent 6 hours straight on my starting planet and still have a TON of points of interest to check out. I found TWO spaceships on my planet and actually moved into one of them because it had an extra slot and upgraded. I am still searching for two more animals to scan so I can complete the scanning-for-credits achievement thingy.
Funny thing about this - I don't want to leave my planet. I know the next planet I go to I'll have to basically do everything all over again.
I didn't have any noticeable "pop-in" when playing, but I did notice some weird "fuzz-in" once in a while. Fuzz-in must be NMS's version of pop in? Instead of textures and object popping- in, they seemed to be fuzzy and then de-blurred as I approached. It was way way out and only when was cruising around the surface in my ship. So, not a big deal. Just weird.
Oh - one other thing if you haven't got the game yet - you can CHOOSE your starting planet. When I first booted up the game, I exited the game after changing the visual settings and then reloaded the game. If you don't save the game at the beginning, you'll be placed on a different starting planet. You can keep entering and exiting the starting planets over and over again until you get one that you like. I got one that was LOADED with minerals and plants and animals. Not sure if this is intentional or a bug, but it worked for me. In case you start off on a crap planet with hardly anything on it. Don't enter your ship, don't rename the planet and don't upload any scans until you are placed on a planet that is loaded with stuff. Just wait for the intro to end, look around and if the planet looks empty, exit to desktop and reboot the game and wait for the next planet to load.
That's it for now. Good luck getting your PC's configured. It really is a fun and addictive game once you get your PC working with it.