Thank you very much for your continued assistance and suggestions @hokierulz it is appreciated.
So yes, when I uncheck Use hardware acceleration when available as seen below:
The pixelation goes away and the crisp expected rendering returns.
As such, this now definitively seems it is due to hardware acceleration using my video card, correct? I am still thinking this is related to the drivers I have installed for NVidia for the issue above. My hunch is that even though I have uninstalled them they are sticking around somehow and it’s leading to this issue. 
