Think I'll wait until the official release & try again, I hate re-downloading the sharechain....lol It's running nice again now, so I'll let it ride.
Did you use the binary or compile from the 0.12 branch? (which is what I did btw)
I complied core rc3 and the classic 12 branch, both run fine with significantly lower getblocktemplate latency...
Edit: see jtoomim's comment above, I run at 750000 on my test node so did not test larger