I wanted to give an update! I am a happy man right now, because I got “my speed” back! LOL So in BIOS I had the Intel Speed Step turned off. It sounded like it was going to mess with and adjust CPU speed (which to me meant lowering it) so I had it OFF. In Task manager, all this time I have been at 1.69 GHZ speed. After turning Speed Step on in BIOS, I am now cruising at 4 - 4.4 ghz. What a difference! CPU usage in GP went from 70-80% to 30% even when running 3 pretty CPU heavy plugins at the same time.
When attempting to use this laptop with the low CPU speed, last night GP froze on me after attempting to switch variations and turning a CPU heavy plugin on. Can the lack of CPU power crash a CPU heavy plugin? It was an Arturia plugin.