I know a lot of people have reported graphics performance issues on clearcut before, but I seem to have it much worse than most. I don't have this severe of a problem on any other map. I don't run the ultra low graphics settings many players do, so I was optimistic I could at least find a way to minimize the problem and set out to do some troubleshooting.

[b]Long Explanation:[/b]
[spoiler]
If I face backwards in spawn and move around the game performs normally. Once I reach mid with players, the game stutters nonstop. I spent some time with the performance profiler and as expected at mid I see numerous massive dips down to something like 1-40fps despite my average fps being around 140-200. Every spike coincides with Mat_ThreadedEndFrame launching off the edge of the graph.

Took me a little while but I eventually stumbled upon this buried in the dev wiki.
"When using multithreaded rendering the profiler aggregates some the cost of rendering under 'Mat ThreadedEndframe' instead of showing the cost under the proper subsections. (Such as Static Prop Rendering, Brush Model Rendering, etc..)
To accurately measure costs on any given map, disable multicore rendering."
That's probably common knowledge to people with more experience with the engine, but Source isn't an engine I've spent any time developing within. Figured it might be valuable information to pass on. If you want to test this yourself turn off multithreading then run sv_cheats 1; budget_panel_height 700; +showbudget. So anyways, I disabled all multithreading and opened the profiler again.

That massive spike comes from Dynamic Light Rendering. I've been running r_dynamic 0 and r_maxdlights 0 so this result doesn't really make any sense? The docs seem to indicate that r_dynamic 0 alone should disable dynamic lighting entirely. I found a separate r_dynamiclighting setting in the console and tried setting it to 0. This completely resolved the issue. The Dynamic Light Rendering task stayed at 0 like it should have. I wouldn't say mid performed exceptionally by any means, but the unplayable stuttering was solved. Unfortunately, this isn't a real solution because r_dynamiclighting 0 requires sv_cheats 1. I can't find any information in surface level searches about what r_dynamiclighting is and how it differs from r_dynamic. Visually the game looks identical to me with r_dynamiclighting on and off.

I can say I also see these Dynamic Light Rendering spikes on other maps like process, but they're very, very infrequent in comparison.

At this point I don't feel I have enough experience with the engine to justify diagnosing any further so I'm handing off the torch. Does anyone with more knowledge know what's going on here? This feels like an engine bug to me combined with a map optimization issue that's accentuating it, but that's purely a guess.
[/spoiler]
[b]TLDR:[/b] The candle flicker effect seems to cause the stuttering I see.