Ultra preset/ultra shadows locked @ 80 fps?

[savagebeest]

Strangest but fortunate thing happened to me during my years old quest to run il2 in vr butter smooth.  I never bothered trying to run this game on ultra settings since balanced and even low settings caused the occasional dreaded horizon jitters/micro stutters. Even turning everything down to potato mode still caused micro stutters when rolling the plane. They by all means weren’t absolutely terrible but just got annoyed so I said what the hell and set the graphics to ultra and shadows to ultra as well as other settings in the higher end (not everything some stayed off or low I don’t remember) next I launch a qmb in a mig 3 attacking artillery with several planes in the air and to my amazement I was locked at 79-80 with virtually no stutters or jitters (maybe a rare hickup once a sortie but that’s totally fine and acceptable to me)
 

is this common? Did I trigger something in order to get running so nicely? Perhaps my pc is a masochist? I’m not pro with pc’s and setting things up. I’m curious if this is a route one would take if the game isn’t running as smooth. 
 

i7 12700kf

4070ti

16 3200 ram

rift s 

[Argosafe]

It's a weird thing this game.  Bit of a lottery on settings.