It would be interesting to know if the same is true for Intel/AMD. I have one NVIDIA PC and the desktop - not even Games - feels very sluggish on GNOME - I haven't tried KDE yet. On the contrary, my AMD gaming rig subjectively feels very snappy, but I have never measured it.
KDE on an AMD card (7900XTX) feels incredibly snappy to use, it's at least on par with windows generally.