@hmesman There is a presumption here that you are using a graphics card, is that correct (yes you are using a GTX 1050) or are you using just the CPU either by intent because you have no graphics card or by accident because your PL6.10 configuration has decided not to use the card!
There does not appear to be the radical difference you are experiencing between my i7 4790K + GTX 1050Ti(4GB) with PL6.10 and my other i7-4790K + GTX 1050(2GB) with PL6.6.1 other than the differences in power of the 1050Ti versus the 1050!
Here are the figures for tests conducted with 10 of my images (20 mp RAW images from a Lumix G9) on my i7 4790K with a 1050Ti graphics card (and I did forget to select all 10 images on not one but two tests)!
Plus I didn’t read your original post properly!
Your concern is between PL 6.10 and a previous release, which could be PL6.9 or … you don’t state the previous release that you are comparing the 8 minutes to 1 minute (PL6.9).
The problem is that most users will have moved and returning to a previous release is not a trivial process just to run a test
so for the record
PL6.10 (i7-4790K GTX 1050Ti (4GB)):-
PL7.0 (i7-4790K GTX1050Ti(4GB):-
PL6.6.1 (i7-4790K GTX1050(2GB):-
Please note order of tests changed.
and just out of interest
PL6.9.0 Ryzen 5600G RTX 3060(12GB):-
All these runs were on PL6.9.0 but on a processor aproximately 2 times faster than my i7s and the RTX 3060 is way faster than the GTX1050Ti and GTX1050 GPUs!
During the tests I swapped from the RTX3060 in the preferences to CPU only and did not restart but as I have found before that single change seems to work but I then changed it a number of times and all the timings were about the same!
I then repeated the changes but with a restart after each preference change and obtained the figures above!
PS:- I am still running on the same graphics drivers I loaded when the RTX 3060 was added to one of the i7 4790Ks (the one now housing the 1050Ti).