Well my performance is pretty much unchanged by the patches, however:
Cutscenes are capped at 30 fps by the game, so that's point a). You can change it by adding this to your shortcut for the game:
-GameTime.MaxSimFps 60 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 60+
If you do, any time you make a new character he'll get stuck in the fade immediately after finishing the character though. Just FYI.
I have a GTX 780 ti which performs roughly the same as an r9 270. I'm running it at a 1440p monitor, which eats about 20-25 fps compared to a 1080p monitor. But I can forget about ultra, and don't even play with default "high". I have to turn a few things down. So if you're at a 1080p monitor it seems to me you should be fine with a "high" setting. If performance is "pretty bad" on "high" - then I don't know.
Tbh I'm slightly dissapointed with my own system performance (on this game) as well. Many other new AAA titles I can run on high to ultra without much trouble.