High load distance = Better FPS?

Can someone please explain to me why I actually get better performance when I increase the load distance? The game still just uses 1/3 of my VRAM, but i get 4 or 5 more FPS with maxed out draw distance settings as compared to zero on those sliders. Also, it seems like I get noticeably bad pop-in regardless of these settings as well.

Either A) the sliders are broken and don’t actually do anything or B) maxing out the sliders somehow makes the game run more efficiently without actually increasing system load.

I just don’t get it. I really wish we could get some feedback from the devs on performance issues. They seem very concerned with story bugs (none of which i’ve encountered) and not concerned at all about performance complaints. I’ve neer seen a game so poorly optimized that I only get a 5 FPS boost going from low to high settings.

spec-
i7-7700hq
16gb RAM
GTX 1060 max-q 6GB

When I increased the render distance I got a more stable framerate but it was also slightly lower in most areas. But overall it did seem smoother due to a decrease in drastic FPS drops.