I reached out to support and received this reply: "if you already have the game installed, it will likely redownload at release due to the number of changes made since Early Access, the Early Access version may reduce the download file size but I don't have any specific information to share unfortunately."
Based on that it's a toss-up whether it's better to re-install from scratch or just download the release version over the EA version. I would also suggest removing any mods before a re-install. I intend to wait until mods are "certified" for the release version.
