Purpose of this thread is to post the relevant responses so far that have been posted that are clearly buried by the less useful posts to the point where users don't even scroll back to the earlier pages anymore then just assume the blues never addressed their questions when in fact they have. So here is a Summery to bring you up to speed.
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Known Solutions:

1. Many people with video cards that have less than 512vram have found that the new GLL engine in general does not run well on their hardware and adding SET gxApi "OpenGL" to config file helps in most of those cases.

A. Close World of Warcraft app if it's open.

B. Open TextEdit

C. Drag your Config.wtf file (located in wow/wtf folder) over the TextEdit icon in dock to make textedit open it.

D. Add SET gxApi "OpenGL" on a new line then save and close file.

2. Many users experiencing invisible spell details such as weather, or projected textures have found going into Interface then choosing Display, then disabling "Emphasize my spell effects" restores game functionality to being able to correctly see boss or environment projected textures.

3. Some select video cards can temporarily remove symptoms by toggling expose, or full screen/windowed mode once, then back to their previous setting. If this is one of your cards post your specs and card and that this solution worked for you so blizzard can compile a list of cards affected by this issue.

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Blue Posts:

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Q u o t e:
"It would be helpful for you to post some data and or be a bit more specific.

For example- list your system (including video card, OS version and computer type), and list what your FPS is with sunshafts on and with them off. You could do the same with water as well. We have heard of this issue, but we could use some more information."

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Source:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27191403622&pageNo=1&sid=1#19

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Q u o t e:
I do have same problem some sever spike lag. I can pass to 80 fps to 4 fps for like 10 second. in any video configuration. This is rly anoying.

I encountered one of these "spikes" last night. I'll be investigating this more today. With the servers not being in a stable state it's hard to theorize what's going on here.

"We'll be reviewing the crashes that you guys have been submitting since the patch went live yesterday. "

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Source:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27191403622&sid=1&pageNo=2#20

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Q u o t e:
"I think the new graphic settings are confusing most people in this thread so let me explain a few things.

We added a bunch of new effects and improved a few in 4.0.1 so ultra settings doesn't equal ultra settings in 3.3.5, far from it.

Ultra settings from 3.3.5 in 4.0.1 means
Shadows = Fair
Liquid = Low
Sunshaft = Disabled
View distance = High
Ground Clutter = Fair

I'm not sure about the rest but those should have a huge impact on your performance.

We are also aware that the recommended settings are way too high for most the cards and you should adjust them until you get an acceptable framerate. We will change the recommended settings in a future patch.

That said, we are aware of some performance issues including stuttering. We are working to fix these and to improve performance in general."

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Source:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27191403622&sid=1&pageNo=15#296

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Q u o t e:
"In my previous post, I did acknowledge that we are currently working to fix the performance, I never said that the fix was to simply lower your settings.

If you are experiencing random drop in FPS, can you try to switch between window and fullscreen(cmd-m) to see if it fixes the problem?

Also, could you try without your addons?


Just to be clear, these are not solutions, this is to help us understand the problem. "

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Source:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27191403622&sid=1&pageNo=17#339
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Here are some tests you can run to help developers out:

Thinks to do before testing:

Step 1. Ensure you have latest graphics driver updates available to you.

Mac OS X 10.5.8: 1.5.48 <---10.5 users have no driver updates available to them. 10.6 recommended

Mac OS X 10.6.4: 1.6.16.11 (ATI driverbase 8209/Nvidia driverbase 19.5.8f01)

Mac OS X 10.6.4 (2010 imac special build): 1.6.18.13 (ATI driverbase 8408/Nvidia driverbase unknown)

Mac OS X 10.6.4 with graphics update: 1.6.18.18 (ATI driverbase 8557/Nvidia driverbase 19.5.9f02) <---10.6 users should be on this or later

Mac OS X 10.6.5 early beta builds (not available yet): 1.6.22

Mac OS X 10.6.5 newer/current build (not available yet): 1.6.24

Step 2. Disable sunshafts and set water to low and shadows no higher than fair.
Reason: You cannot compare old fps to new fps with new visuals turned on. Your settings need to be comparable to old.

Step 3. Disable any addons you are running. Or at the very least any creating lua errors, framexml errors or taints. make sure lua errors are turned on in help options.
Reason: Broken non updated addons can cause performance loss especially if they are causing errors. Hiding errors doesn't make them go away.

Step 4. Test fps with these new settings in area's where you are familiar with your old 3.3.5 fps, then note your new 4.0.1 fps.
Reason: Cause we wanna know how they differ of course.

Step 5. More controlled tests. Test one thing at a time.
Reason: This helps isolate specific trouble areas. If you test out fps by flying around while spinning camera while changing zones while approaching crowded and non crowded areas, all at the same time. This doesn't tell us where the problem is. It could be ANY one of those!

Control tests that help:

1. Sitting still, preferably a non crowded area but a detailed area such as anywhere in northern.
Reason: This shows us your stable fps. Nothing is moving and nothing new is being rendered. all objects on screen are buffered and loaded.

2. Sitting still, busy. This is an area with a lot of activity such as dalaran. Constant players moving in and out of your screen. The game engine in this state is rendering only player texture changes and not environment since you are not moving yourself.
Reason: This is important cause it evaluates performance loss suffered only from player textures.

3. Moving slow in an empty northrend area. Run around crystalsong forrest or something on foot. Preferably moving forward into new areas not turning around at all. Just keep going one way. Call it the run from crystalsong forrest to dragonblight. Take note of performance when going from one zone into the next on foot especially.
Reason: This will test out buffering, caching and graphics handling of environment effects at a low pace.

4. Moving Medium in an empty northrend area. Pop out that ole ground mount and do same as test 3 only testing data at a higher rate.

5. Moving really fast. Pop out your fast flying mount and do same as test 3,4 only really fast. Note performance in this setting.

6. Moving crowded test 1. This is pretty much the test everyone is doing anyways but break it down more. Run around dalaran on foot first noting fps drop and what's going on around you.
Reason: This tests game handling of heavy player activity and buffering a lot of players on the fly as you slowly move around the city.

7. Moving crowded test 2. Pop out that ground mount and run around the city, preferably a different session as test 6 (if you do one right after the other, objects you saw first lap around city will still be cached/buffered into memory and present an inaccurate representation of the actual results).

8. Spin test. Standing still, spin camera around really fast making the game have to load up everything all around all at once.
Reason: This tests sudden changes to your environment when client is thrown something it least expects.

Why so many tests? Cause there are too many scenarios for devs to truly get a representation of problems by generic "my fps are lower now" posts. They need to know why 4.0.1 is worse. Where to look.
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Specs:

What are you running?

Hardware

Software

Graphics card

Memory

There is a bug that cause stuttering right now but this should be fixed in the next patch. Now even with this fixed there's still can be stuttering depending on your view distance and how fast your machine is. Also, limiting your frame rate to 60(or lower) should help a lot if your frame rate is higher than 60.

We are currently working to try to eliminate as much stuttering as possible.

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Q u o t e:
Provide a list of graphics cards that have been tested by Blizzard with Cataclysm. Rank them in order of playability (note I consider anything below 15 fps unplayable). The tests need to be done in a raid setting with all the usual suspects going on. After all, most people aren't strolling around some barren wasteland all by themselves, they are in a BG or an instance that is usually taxing everyones internet connection, not to mention their system's resources.

If my Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT with 256MB of VRAM more or less runs like crap now with patch 4.0.1, it certainly isn't good enough for the minimum settings of Cataclysm. And I have everything set to their lowest settings.

Yes the text trick lets my machine run at 15-28 fps with occasional screen flashes, but it's no where near what it used to be before the patch.

All that we ask is for Blizzard to provide us with a list. It's not like we have a plethora of chipsets to choose from, the latest Macs ship with basically only 2 options. Every Mac that has ever shipped has only shipped with 1-2 options. I'm not gonna spend a fortune for a Mac upgrade to find out that even the top of the line are poorly supported. I expect you will have a large number of Mac users that don't make that list. Better to find out now than be cursing the ground that Blizzard stands on for selling them a game that won't even run in a playable fashion when it arrives.

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We currently have and test all video cards that shipped with Intel Macs. This includes your GeForce 7300.

I posted this before but we are aware of the performance problems and we are working on it. In fact, we never stop working on performance. Dalaran is the most common place where we will check performance. The problem is before a patch goes live, Dalaran is mostly empty.