I am getting incredible RAM usage, both physical and video:

 

At ending of a flight, max was 12.3G, current was 10.2,,,, closed P3D and it went to 3.7 MIN meaning 8.6 G MAX  ???

take away a gig for addons and its still 7.6

 

 

The video maxed at 4066MB

 

Unbelievable. I must have my numbers wrong

 

And there were no stutters landed at FLyTampa's  CYUL with 16-22 fps all those clouds and 65% UT2

This wouldn't be difficult to determine, no need to speculate.  Just open up task manager, go to processes, and sort by RAM usage.  Anything using significant quantity of RAM that is not Prepar3d.exe would prove your theory.