@tgilly If you'd like to diagnose the problem, then you'd have to provide the necessary info. No, I don't think 4.4 is unstable, but your problems look like a power supply problem, the system throttling itself down automatically, or more related to the fact that your ROM folder is mounted over the network.
Check if your power supply is right up to the specs and then try running the ROMs from the sd card for a test to see if you get the same symptoms.

Thanks :)

Hi all. To make my question crystal clear, basically I'm looking to know the following.

Do you benefit at all from setting "gpu_freq=500"? Does it set the frequencies for the various GPU blocks to 500 MHz without "force_turbo=1" enabled?

I'm hoping it does because being forced to disable the dynamic clock driver to do this seems like an unfortunate design oversight for a hobbyist circuit board. It's bugging me so much I think I'm going to be trying to determine the answer with my test bed Pi3 tonight. Hoping someone out there has an answer for me though. The way the documentation is written seems to indicate that "gpu_freq=500" might work, but setting the individual blocks (such as v3d_freq=500) doesn't, or that's one way to interpret it anyway, its not 100% clear about that. But in the worst case scenario, if the 3d block is locked at 250 MHz, it will probably stay that way as I really don't like the idea of disabling dynamic clocks lol.