FPS Drops to Near-Zero in many circumstances

Description:
I'm experiencing consistent and repeatable short freezes and massive FPS drops (GPU usage drops to ~5%) during specific in-game interactions in Path of Exile 2.

These freezes occur:
When placing items into stash tabs (especially auto-sorting ones)
When using orbs (e.g., Alchemy, Chaos, etc.) on items in inventory
Occasionally when moving between stash tabs or interacting with UI-heavy elements.
When mapping and walking around in hideout.

When this happens:
My FPS drops momentarily or the game freezes for ~0.5 seconds
GPU usage plummets from ~60% to ~5%
CPU usage remains low and RAM is stable
No VRAM pressure is observed (only ~15% used out of 12GB)
The issue disappears temporarily after restarting the game, but returns after a few minutes of gameplay.

System Specs:
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti Super
CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K (12th Gen)
RAM: 32GB DDR5
Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD (game installed here)
OS: Windows 11 (latest updates)
API tested: Both Vulkan and DX12 (same result)