I think, perhaps, the mods folder in the documents is more efficient, at the cost of a longer neighborhood load time.

My game has felt WORLDS faster (not to mention worlds prettier, but that's just because the patch violently enhanced the lighting), and I am thinking it has to do with the documents mods folder and the longer neighborhood loading time. I think the game is loading the neighborhood for the most part, instead of just your house.

Although I should note that sometimes it loads relatively fast and sometimes it takes minutes at a time.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I did not have to wait for CC icons to load at all. Like, on a brand new install, there was no need to wait for my CC thumbnails OR game content icons to load. They were all there immediately, and the objects popped up as soon as I clicked on them. THis tells me there's some loading/efficiency changes going on. There was no need to rebuilt an object cache in-game, it was already there.