Just tossing my confirmations out there:
...
So, the increase appears to also cause additional rejects that should be discounted from total increase gain, cutting it down a full 1% in my case.
This is really not good. I honestly do not know why this would happen; are you sure it is related to the patch and isn't a result in the general randomness when searching for solutions? Perhaps someone else, more familiar with bitcoin mining than me, can chime in?