Update: I found the issue.
This was actually a Steam issue. Unfortunately the steam libraries that associate with the nvidia drivers never got updated (or showed an available update). So the libraries were still for 535.113. I had to uninstall and reinstall steam to get the correct libraries. I’m running the flatpak version of steam too if that makes a difference.
Moral of the story: Take your damn snapshots before updating.
Yeah, I’ve tried drivers 525 as well. Same sort of performance issue.
Good luck, thanks for the notice.