I played last night for about 40 minutes, EU server at 11:30PM Pacific, settings 1440 Very High, FPS was steady in the mid 20's which is awesome for me - occasional and very short drops/stutters I assume related to massive pirate activity, but very playable from a purely mechanical or performance point of view.
BUT, there were literally pirates everywhere, 2 interdictions Olisar to Cry-Astro, 1 interdiction Cry-Astro to Cellin, pirates spawned at EVERY attempted landing site (3 places, right on top of the site as I was making my terminal approach), and in numbers I had no interest in engaging in my Penguin.
Decided I was not going to be able to make any monies under those conditions so set Cry-Astro in StarMap, 2 interdictions on way to Cry-Astro, 2 more on way from Cry-Astro to Olisar. All events started with one pirate but quickly spawned to 3 to 6 which for me was literally an unenjoyable mess.
I am impressed with the server performance under that kind of AI load - it spawned no less than 24 pirates against me, sometimes 6 or so at a time. I did not engage in combat except at the last interdiction at which point I had had enough and went after the Cat. When they interdict, it appears their shields are completely down (may be due to initial spawn condition) and I thought I might have a chance so I went in close and unloaded on it but jumped out when 5 of his buddies showed up in Gladii and Aurora LN's.
I do not frankly enjoy dakka dakka gameplay in SC right now so it ended up being a very disappointing night - it was beautiful, but not enjoyable since I had set out to recreate my fortune - had I been soloing the Connie I might not have actually made it out (will try that today).
Once I got back to Olisar it was steady at 17-20 FPS in 1440 so I did a test switch to 4K and saw only a 2-3 FPS drop once it stabilized.
They definitely are making major performance progress behind the curtain in my experience and this raises my hopes for 3.1 in particular.
'Gimp