Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect it is mostly RAM related, not CPU related. My laptop is an older i5 with Intel graphics and 4GB of RAM, and Gnome Shell (on Wayland) uses about 1GB more memory than Sway (a tiling Wayland compositor) does, which makes a big difference with the same applications. But when it's not under RAM pressure, Gnome is perfectly smooth.
I have a brand new i5 laptop with 12GB RAM and the stupid application list opening animation looks like it runs at 10FPS.
This isn't like Windows where you're stuck with it if you need that OS for its applications.