So, I fixed my driver issues (thanks to the person who posted the link, why doesn't NVidia have it listed in the driver finder on their site?), tweaked a few settings, and tested my software from the previous install out. Everything checks out, but I can feel the slowdown from the upgrade. I'm gonna clean install over the weekend, but for your average end user, the upgrade process is pretty solid compared to previous upgrades I've encountered.
The only thing I'm concerned about is the updates. I work second shift, which means I get home at 12:30AM. I don't want my machine to be in the middle of an update when I get home, everyone is sleeping, and I want to play a game. Is it a good idea to have the machine automatically update without the user being able to control any part of it (except you can control whether or not it automatically restarts after)? To a degree, for most people, I would say yes. I'm not most people, and neither are any of you. I don't agree with MS at all on this, but I will deal with it until it interrupts my schedule or sticks me with a driver update that crashes my system. Because God knows, we needed another reason for a system to crash without warning, and more steps to an already complicated troubleshooting process.