Question Intel i5 12th Gen performing badly

[NicePants69]

Hi. My HP Victus laptop should be capable of processing real-time audio, but it's really struggling. Here be specs with benchmark ratings:

GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 - 34.1%
SSD: WD Green SN350 2TB - 151.4%
RAM: Team Group Inc TEAMGROUP-SD4-3200 2x16GB - 92.8%
12th Gen Intel Core i5-12450H
1,064 User benchmarks, average bench 84%
U3E1, 1 CPU, 8 cores, 12 threads
Base clock 2 GHz, turbo 1.75 GHz (avg)
Performing way below expectations (4th percentile)

Nothing looks unusual in Task Manager as far as CPU usage goes.
BIOS is up to date, there's no throttling occurring, no chkdsk errors. HD usage is at about 60%.

When I run WhySoSlow, these 3 elements are flagged:
Application responsiveness: The highest application responsiveness on your system was measured at 12.101 ms. This value is considered critical, your system does not appear responsive. Your kernel responsiveness is also considered poor which is likely to be the cause of the problem.
Kernel latencies and real-time capabilities: The highest kernel responsiveness on your system was measured at 11.988 ms. This value is considered critical, your system is very likely to have difficult processing tasks in real-time. Note that this value says does not say anything about your overall system performance.
BIOS and chipset behavior: The highest measured SM BIOS interrupt or other stall was 4802 microseconds. This is considered very poor. Your system will have difficulty handling multimedia in real-time and will be subject to unexpected stutters and unresponsive behavior.

Latency Monitor report flags 'highest measured interrupt to process latency 5059.40', and 'highest reported DPC routine execution time 4998.750'. I'm not sure what those mean, but they don't look great.

Any suggestions as to where I might look to find out what's clogging up the CPU?

 

[logainofhades]

That clock speed is way off, for what that CPU is capable of. That can indicate a thermal throttling issue.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...-12m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz/specifications.html

Is windows, and all drivers, up to date?

Could be a bad windows install. Backing up what you need, and doing a fresh install, of windows, may help.

 

[NicePants69]

Thanks for your reply. Yep, Windows and all drivers are up to date. I'm hoping to avoid re-installing because I've spent so long setting the %^&! thing up, but it's looking increasingly like the only option. Are there any signifiers I could look for to confirm that a bad Windows install is the issue? Wouldn't that flag something weird up in the task manager?