gemseashore I would definitely test without your mods, even if you don't save your progress. You can try a new save as well, or a few new saves in different seasons, just to see what you get. I've seen a few scattered reports of weird graphics after the update, but not enough to suggest that this is a widespread game bug. And your GPU and its driver are common enough that there would definitely be other reports.
I use hwinfo too, and it's mostly great, but its creator can only go by what he observes on his own. As far as I know, he's not working directly with any hardware manufacturer, let alone all of them. So the app picks up sensor data and the creator refines things as best he can.